Taylor bubble experiment

↔

Picture: Photo of the Taylor bubble and its reproduction with wall-resolved LES. (Hint: use the slider)

Taylor bubble is a bullet-shaped bubble, which flows in a vertical pipe and occupies almost the entire cross section of the pipe.  In practical situations, a Taylor bubble is frequently observed to be followed by other Taylor bubbles, which are separated from each other by liquid slugs. Such flow is commonly denoted as slug flow and can be found in numerous industrial applications, for example production of steam in geothermal power plants, boiling and condensation in thermal power plants, emergency core cooling of nuclear reactors, etc.

In our experiment, behavior of a Taylor bubble is studied for water-air fluid mixture, which is characterized with a sharply curved interface at the trailing edge of the bubble. It has been observed that a Taylor bubble disintegrates (i.e. decays in size) when it is exposed to turbulent flow regime. In order to be able to measure the bubble decay rate, the buoyancy of the bubble is balanced by the opposing liquid flow. This is so-called counter-current flow regime. PIV measurements of the velocity field together with the measured bubble decay rate are of paramounth importance for validation of the high-fidelity numerical simulations.

Publications:

• MIKUŽ, Blaž, FREDERIX, Edo, M. A., KOMEN, Ed. M. J., TISELJ, Iztok. Taylor bubble behaviour in turbulent flow regime. Computational Fluid Dynamics for Nuclear Reactor Safety (CFD4NRS-8), online conference, 2020 November 25-27.
• FREDERIX, Edo, KOMEN, Ed, TISELJ, Iztok, MIKUŽ, Blaž. LES of turbulent co-current Taylor bubble flow. Flow, turbulence and combustion, ISSN 1386-6184, 2020, doi: 10.1007/s10494-020-00118-0.
• MIKUŽ, Blaž, KAMNIKAR, Jan, PROŠEK, Jakob, TISELJ, Iztok. Experimental observation of Taylor bubble disintegration in turbulent flow. 28th International Conference Nuclear Energy for New Europe, Portorož, Slovenia, 2019 
  September 9-12. Conference proceedings.
• MIKUŽ, Blaž, FREDERIX, Edo, M. A., TISELJ, Iztok, KOMEN, Ed. M. J. High-fidelity simulation of a Taylor bubble in co-current turbulent flow. 18th International Meeting on Nuclear Reactor Thermal Hydraulics (NURETH-18), 
  Portland, Oregon, US, 2019 August 18-22.
• FREDERIX, Edo, M. A., MIKUŽ, Blaž, KOMEN, Ed. M. J. LES of a taylor bubble in co-current turbulent pipe flow. DLES 12, Workshop Direct and Large Eddy Simulation, Madrid, Spain, 2019 June 5-7.

Page editor: Anil Kumar Basavaraj