Numerical study of dynamics of single bubbles and bubble swarms

A systematic computational study of the dynamics of gas bubbles rising in a viscous liquid is presented. Two-dimensional simulations are carried out. Both the dynamics of single bubbles and small groups of bubbles (bubble swarms) are considered. This is a continuation of our previous studies on the two-bubble coalescence and vortex shedding [A. Smolianski, H. Haario, P. Luukka, Vortex shedding behind a rising bubble and two-bubble coalescence: a numerical approach, Appl. Math. Model. 29 (2005) 615–632]. The proposed numerical method allows us to simulate a wide range of flow regimes, accurately capturing the shape of the deforming interface of the bubble and the surface tension effect, while maintaining the mass conservation. The computed time-evolution of bubble’s position and rise velocity shows a good agreement with the available experimental data. At the same time, the results on the dynamics of bubble interface area, which are, up to our knowledge, presented for the first time, show how much the overall mass transfer would be affected by the interface deformation in the case of the bubble dissolution. Another set of experiments that are of interest for chemical engineers modelling bubbly flows concerns the bubble swarms and their behavior in different bubble-shape regimes. The ellipsoidal and spherical shape regimes are considered to represent, respectively, the coalescing and non-coalescing bubble swarms. The average rise velocities of the bubble swarms are computed and analyzed for both regimes.     

Numerical simulation of single gas bubbles under shear flow conditions

Disperse gas bubbles play an important role in many industrial applications. Knowing the rising velocity, the interfacial area, or the critical size for break-up or coalescence in different systems can be crucial for the process design. Usually the flow experienced by bubbles is not uniform but sheared. Under shear-flow conditions bubbles develop a lift force perpendicular to the flow direction. In the present work direct numerical simulations are applied to examine the dependency of the lift force on the shear rate for bubbles in pure liquids. A level-set based volume-tracking method is implemented into the CFD-code OpenFOAM, to follow the free interface of the gas bubble. Results show good agreement with available experimental results from single bubbles in a rotating chamber. (© 2009 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Capturing coalescence and break-up processes in vertical gas–liquid flows: Assessment of population balance methods

Gas–liquid flows are commonly encountered in industrial flow systems. Numerical studies have been performed to assess the performances of different population balance approaches – direct quadrature method of moments (DQMOMs), average bubble number density (ABND) model and homogeneous MUlti-SIze-Group (MUSIG) model – in tracking the changes of gas void fraction and bubble size distribution under complex flow conditions and to validate the model predictions against experimental measurements from medium- and large-sized vertical pipes. Subject to different gas injection method and flow conditions, bubble size evolution exhibited a coalescence dominant trend in the medium-sized pipe; while bubble break-up was found to be dominant in large-sized pipe. The two experiments were therefore strategically selected for carrying out a thorough examination of existing population balance models in capturing the complicated behaviour of bubble coalescence and break-up. In general, predictions of all the different population balance approaches were in reasonable agreement with experimental data. More importantly, encouraging results have been obtained in adequately capturing the dynamical changes of bubbles size due to bubble interactions and transition from wall peak to core peak gas void fraction profiles. As a compromise between numerical accuracy and computational time, DQMOM has performed rather well in capturing the essential two-phase flow structures within the medium- and large-sized vertical pipes when compared to those of ABND and homogeneous MUSIG models. From a practical perspective, the ABND model may still be considered as a more viable approach for industrial applications of gas–liquid flow systems.     

Nonuniform Approach to Terminal Velocity for Single Mode Rayleigh-Taylor Instability

Abstract The temporal development of a single mode Rayleigh-Taylor instability consists of three stages:the linear, free fall and terminal velocity regimes. The purpose of this paper is to report on new phenomenaobserved in the approach to terminal velocity. Our numerical study shows an unexpected nonuniform approachto terminal velocity. The nonuniformity applies especially to the spikes, which are fingers of heavy fluid fallinginto the light fluid, but it also applies to the rising bubbles of light fluid. For spikes especially our results callinto question the meaningfulness of a terminal velocity for moderate values of the Atwood number A. After ashort time period of pseudo-terminal plateau, the spike velocity increases to a significantly higher maximum,followed by a decrease. This phenomena appears to be due to a slow evolution in the shape of the spike andbubble. We find a relation between the spike (bubble) acceleration and the tip curvature. In correlation with anincrease in the spike velocity, th     

Update to the MUSIG model in ANSYS CFX for reliable modelling of bubble coalescence and breakup

The MUSIG (Multiple Size Group) model in the commercial CFD code ANSYS CFX is a population balance approach for describing binary bubble coalescence and breakup events. It is widely used in the simulation of poly-dispersed bubbly flows. The purpose of this work is to identify the internal inconsistencies in the discrete method that is applied for the solution of the population balance equation in MUSIG, and to propose an internally consistent one for discretising the source and sink terms that result from bubble coalescence and breakup. The new formulation is superior to the existing ones in preserving both mass and number density of bubbles, allowing arbitrary discretisation schemes and is free of costly numerical integrations. The numerical results on the evolution of bubble size distributions in bubbly flows reveal that the inconsistency in the original MUSIG regarding bubble breakup is non-negligible for both academic and practical cases. The discussion on the effect of internal inconsistency as well as updates to the model presented in this work are necessary and important for calibration of bubble coalescence and breakup models using the MUSIG approach.     

Direct numerical simulation of single gas bubbles in pure and contaminated liquids

Disperse gas bubbles play an important role in many industrial applications. Knowing the rising velocity, the interfacial area, or the critical size for break–up or coalescence in different systems can be crucial for the process design. Hence, knowing the fundamental behaviour of a single bubble appears mandatory for the examination of bubble swarms and for the Euler–Lagrange or Euler–Euler modelling of disperse systems. In the present work a level–set–based volume–tracking method is implemented into the CFD–code OpenFOAM to follow the free interface of a single bubble. The volume–tracking method is coupled with a transport model for surfactants on the interface, including adsorption and desorption processes. The dependency of surface tension on the local surfactant concentration on the interface is modelled by a non–linear (Langmuir) equation of state. Marangoni forces, resulting from surface tension gradients, are included. The rise of a single air bubble (i) in pure water and (ii) in the presence of surfactants of different strengths is simulated. The results show good agreement with available correlations from literature. (© 2008 WILEY-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Numerical modelling of bubbly flows with and without heat and mass transfer

In this paper, modelling gas–liquid bubbly flows is achieved by the introduction of a population balance equation combined with the three-dimensional two-fluid model. For gas–liquid bubbly flows without heat and mass transfer, an average bubble number density transport equation has been incorporated in the commercial code CFX5.7 to better describe the temporal and spatial evolution of the geometrical structure of the gas bubbles. The coalescence and breakage effects of the gas bubbles are modelled according to the coalescence by the random collisions driven by turbulence and wake entrainment while for bubble breakage by the impact of turbulent eddies. Local radial distributions of the void fraction, interfacial area concentration, bubble Sauter mean diameter, and gas and liquid velocities, are compared against experimental data in a vertical pipe flow. Satisfactory agreements for the local distributions are achieved between the predictions and measurements. For gas–liquid bubbly flows with heat and mass transfer, boiling flows at subcooled conditions are considered. Based on the formulation of the MUSIG (multiple-size-group) boiling model and a model considering the forces acting on departing bubbles at the heated surface implemented in the computer code CFX4.4, comparison of model predictions against local measurements is made for the void fraction, bubble Sauter mean diameter, interfacial area concentration, and gas and liquid velocities covering a range of different mass and heat fluxes and inlet subcooling temperatures. Good agreement is achieved with the local radial void fraction, bubble Sauter mean diameter, interfacial area concentration and liquid velocity profiles against measurements. However, significant weakness of the model is evidenced in the prediction of the vapour velocity. Work is in progress through the consideration of additional momentum equations or developing an algebraic slip model to account for the effects of bubble separation.     

A variational multiscale method based on bubble functions for convection-dominated convection-diffusion equation

This work presents a variational multiscale method based on polynomial bubble functions as subgrid scale and a numerical implementation based on two local Gauss integrations. This method can be implemented easily and efficiently for the convection-dominated problem. Static condensation of the bubbles suggests the stability of the method and we establish its global convergence. Representative numerical tests are presented.     

梢涡流场中气泡轨迹及形态数值模拟

针对气泡在舰船尾迹涡流场运动特性,根据其是否为尾涡所捕获,将数值模拟过程分为两个阶段:准球状运动阶段和非球状运动阶段．分别应用单向耦合质点粒子追踪法（PTM）和边界元法（BEM）模拟这两个阶段,将第1阶段结束的物理量作为第2阶段的初始条件,从而完成整个数值模拟过程．在已有数值研究结果和实验数据基础上,探讨空化发生条件,追踪尾迹空泡运动轨迹,模拟尾迹气泡的运动、变形、溃灭等,以及被尾涡捕获后的撕裂等运动特性,旨在为优化设计尾流场提供参考．     

水下爆炸气泡融合动态特性研究

在自然界中,气泡融合是一种重要的物理现象．基于势流理论,采用边界积分法,对水下爆炸气泡融合进行数值模拟研究．依据已有的数值研究成果和实验数据,建立气泡融合三维动力学数值模型,数值模拟结果与实验值吻合良好．应用该文开发的三维计算程序,分析距离、水深等特征参数对气泡融合动态特性的影响,得到了一些规律性的曲线和结论,旨在为水下爆炸气泡融合机理和动态特性研究提供理论参考．     

Gas bubbles in micro capillaries – hydrodynamics and mass transfer

Process design of multi-phase unit operations on the micro-scale relies on the detailed knowledge of the hydrodynamics and mass transfer behavior of discrete disperse fluid particles. The present work examines the hydrodynamics and mass transfer of gas bubbles in vertical capillaries. The hydrodynamic behavior of a single bubble in a capillary including is examined numerically using a modified level-set method [1]. Additionally, the influence of surface-active contaminations (‘surfactants’) and the resulting Marangoni effects are taken into account [2]. This enables the differentiation between bubbles with a mobile, i.e. clean, interface and those with a immobile, i.e. contaminated, interface. Based on the hydrodynamics, the mass transfer is examined. In the present work, mass transfer is from the bubble into the bulk fluid. By using a very high mesh resolution, the local concentration field in and around the gas bubble can be resolved, which gives access to the local mass transfer. Results are in good agreement available correlations from literature. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

BEM-based numerical study of three-dimensional compressible bubble dynamics in stokes flow

The dynamics of compressible gas bubbles in a viscous shear flow and an acoustic field at low Reynolds numbers is studied. The numerical approach is based on the boundary element method (BEM), which is effective as applied to the three-dimensional simulation of bubble deformation. However, the application of the conventional BEM to compressible bubble dynamics faces difficulties caused by the degeneration of the resulting algebraic system. Additional relations based on the Lorentz reciprocity principle are used to cope with this problem. Test computations of the dynamics of a single bubble and bubble clusters in acoustic fields and shear flows are presented.     

Numerical study of formation of a series of bubbles at a submerged orifice

Bubble formation from a submerged orifice is widely applied in bio-process and chemical reaction systems. In this study, the effects of different orifice diameters and contact angles in Period-I and Period-II regimes are studied systematically on a 2D axisymmetric domain. Simulation results are presented from the formation of the first bubble and explained by means of the surrounding fluid field, bubble interaction, and bubble aspect ratio.The orifice diameter is varied from 0.6 mm to 3 mm. The numerical results show that the detachment time of all bubbles remains constant (in time) for smaller orifice diameters (d_a ≤ 1.5 mm), while the detachment time of the first bubble is different from the rest of the bubbles for larger orifice diameters (d_a ≥ 2 mm), which is due to the different surrounding flow field. Contact angles from 60° to 165° are considered for the gas flow rates in the regime of bubble pairing, and it is observed that the bubble detachment time decreases when the contact angle increases, and it converges to a constant value when the contact angle is larger than 135°. In addition, the transition from period doubling to deterministic chaos (in which there is a variable number of bubbles within each period) is observed.A new scenario of inserting a submerged tube upward into the liquid is considered and compared to the previous cases. It is observed that when the tube is vertically inserted into the liquid, the bubble detachment time is even smaller because of higher influence from the surrounding liquid field, leading to a different phenomenon from the non-inserted tube cases.     

Curvature and Bubble Convergence of Harmonic Maps

We explore geometric aspects of bubble convergence for harmonic maps. More precisely, we show that the formation of bubbles is characterized by the local excess of curvature on the target manifold. We give a universal estimate for curvature concentration masses at each bubble point and show that there is no curvature loss in the necks. Our principal hypothesis is that the target manifold is Kähler.     

Numerical Modeling of Laser-Induced Cavitation Bubbles with a Finite Volume Method

We report on the numerical modeling of laser-induced cavitation bubbles with the finite volume method using the open source software package OpenFOAM. The numerical model is validated by comparison to experimental data for the two cases of a bubble collapsing under normal ambient conditions in an unbounded liquid as well as close to a solid wall. (© 2015 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Numerical simulation of the interaction between vortex ring and bubble plume

In present paper a three-dimensional Vortex-In-Cell method with two-way coupling effect was developed to study the bubble plume entrainment by a vortex ring. In this method the continuous flow was calculated by the three-dimensional Vortex-In-Cell method and the bubbles are tracked through bubble motion equation. Two-way coupling effect between continuous flow and dispersed bubbles is considered by introducing a vorticity source term, which is induced by the change of void fraction gradient in each computational cell. After validated by the comparison between experimental measurements and simulation results for the motion of vortex rings and the rising velocity of bubble plume, present method is implemented to simulate the interaction between an evolving vortex ring and a rising bubble plume. It was found that there is little effect of the bubble entrainment to the total circulation of vortex ring while the effect of bubble entrainment to the vortex ring structure is quite obvious. The bubble entrainment by the vortex ring not only changed the vorticity distribution in the vortex structure, but also displaced the positions of the vortex cores. The vorticity in the lower vortex core of the vortex ring decreases more than that in the upper vortex core of the vortex ring while the vortex core in the upper part of the vortex ring is displaced to the center of vortex ring by the entrained bubbles. Smaller bubbles are easier to be entrained by the large scale vortex structure and the transportation distance is in inverse proportion to bubble diameter.     

Numerical resolution of a mono-disperse model of bubble growth in magmas

Growth of gas bubbles in magmas may be modeled by a system of differential equations that account for the evolution of bubble radius and internal pressure and that are coupled with an advection–diffusion equation defining the gas flux going from magma to bubble. This system of equations is characterized by two relaxation parameters linked to the viscosity of the magma and to the diffusivity of the dissolved gas, respectively. Here, we propose a numerical scheme preserving, by construction, the total mass of water of the system. We also study the asymptotic behavior of the system of equations by letting the relaxation parameters vary from 0 to ∞, and show the numerical convergence of the solutions obtained by means of the general numerical scheme to the simplified asymptotic limits. Finally, we validate and compare our numerical results with those obtained in experiments.     

Numerical modelling of free surface flows in metallurgical vessels

A numerical model for simulating the transient behaviour of multi-fluid problems defined in 2D rectangular and cylindrical geometries is presented. The model uses a piecewise linear volume tracking scheme, and maintains sharp interfaces and captures fine-scale flow phenomena such as fragmentation and coalescence. The numerical model was applied to four problems of pyrometallurgical relevance – entrainment of matte in the flow of slag during skimming operations, splash resulting from a drop impinging on a bath, bubble rise in a liquid bath, and top-submerged gas injection. The numerical predictions are in good agreement with the published experimental results. The simulation of top-submerged gas injection showed, in detail, the phenomena of bubble formation, bubble rise, and splash drop formation and recoalescence with the bath. Data useful for engineering purposes such as pressure traces and time-averaged flow fields were obtained, allowing assessment of splash behaviour for given gas injection conditions. The numerical model has been shown to be versatile in being able to adapt to a wide range of multi-phase flow problems.     

Numerical investigations of bubbles rising in water

The hydrodynamics of rising air bubbles in water filled bubble columns are examined using a transient numerical model following the Euler-Euler method. In this particular case the bubble-size distribution is assumed to be mono-disperse and the influence of this assumption on the specific mass-transfer area is discussed. Additionally, the influence of the bubble size is discussed with regard to the mass-transfer area, the air volume-fraction, and the axial air velocity profile. To validate the numerical model, experimental results from tomographic measurements at the Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf (HZDR) are used. (© 2017 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)     

Numerical Simulation of Bubbles in Shear Flow

To gain a basic understanding of foam flow, as it can be found e.g. in transport of aerated food, simulation tools can help to provide better insight. Shearing of the bubbles appears in different flow geometries and is for a bubble assembly not captured analytically. Also experimentally, those flow fields are hard to observe so that simulations are the method of choice. Our method to simulate foams uses a volume of fluid approach that is based on the free surface algorithm by Körner et al. [1]. Different from classical multiphase methods, only the liquid phase is simulated and special boundary conditions at the liquid-gas interface account for the gas phase. With this approach high density ratios, e.g. in water-air systems, are easier to realize than in other methods. High density ratios are even necessary to physically justify the model, where the dynamics of the lighter phase are partially neglected. This method is integrated in the Lattice Boltzmann software framework waLBerla [3] (widely applicable Lattice Boltzmann solver from Erlangen†) that can be used on massively parallel computers and thus allows to simulate even large bubble assemblies. As first validation, single bubbles are sheared with different capillary numbers and the simulation results are compared to literature [2] and show good agreement. The next step is shearing a bubble assembly which is arranged like a dense sphere packing. In order to investigate the geometrical configuration of the assembly and its impact on the behavior during a shear deformation, the bubble assembly is rotated with different angles with respect to the shear direction. (© 2014 Wiley-VCH Verlag GmbH & Co. KGaA, Weinheim)