Computational simulation of Taylor bubbles motion in a stagnant liquid inside a vertical column

Abstract

In the present work, the motion of single Taylor bubbles in a vertical column of stagnant liquid was computationally simulated by using a recent version of the open source software Open FOAM, where a newly developed method (isoAdvector) was introduced together with an improvement of the InterFOAM solver, named Interflow. The simulated column consists of a tube with 2 m in length and inner diameter of 0.024 m, sealed at the ends and partially filled with water. Experiments was also performed under these conditions (Figure 1) in order to measure some bubble parameters by using an ultrasonic technique. The computational simulation was performed solving a mathematical model formed by the isothermal, incompressible and laminar Navier-Stokes equations. In addition, it was assumed that the fluids are immiscible and no turbulence models were used. The equations were discretized by the VOF (volume of fluid) method and solved using the Gauss iteration method. Numerical solutions were obtained for the bubble velocities and shapes which were compared with the experimental results and correlations from literature.