Elementary Numerical Analysis of Wet Foam Formation and Study of Its Flow Structures and Physical Behavior
Résumé
Abstract The purpose of this study is to analyze the flow of wet foam and to study the effect of volume fraction, velocity and surface tension and other physical parameters on the foam flow. The most numerical researches done in this area are for single-phase flows. The numerical simulation in this study is the first simulation in the foam flow, in which both the bubbles and the water are simulated as two-phase flow. In this study, fluid containing a surfactant and bubbles are flowing in a duct. The dimensions of the duct cross section is 15 × 60 in millimeters. The numerical solution is performed for three Reynolds numbers of 50, 100 and 1000, three volume fractions of 48, 41 and 28, and three Weber numbers of 0.405, 0.27 and 0.203 (27 different modes), and the effect of the above parameters on the flow behavior and its physical properties have been investigated. It was found that in foam flow, the velocity fluctuations, due to the movement of bubbles in the flow, is in the order of magnitude of the mean velocity. The same is true for wall shear stress. By increasing the Reynolds number, the pressure loss increases, the magnitude of the velocity fluctuations decreases and the frequency of the velocity fluctuations increases. By increasing the Weber number, the pressure loss and the magnitude of the velocity fluctuations decrease and the mean shear stress increases. By increasing the foam quality, pressure loss increases, the mean shear stress and the magnitude of the velocity fluctuations decrease and its frequency increases. And the phenomenon of coalescence causes a sudden increase in momentum speed.