Modelling and validation of turbulence parameters at the interface of horizontal multiphase flows

One limitation today in simulating horizontal two phase flow is that there is no special turbulence treatment at the free surface. For self generating waves and slugs, the interfacial momentum exchange and the turbulence parameters have to be modelled correctly. Without any special treatment of the free surface, the high velocity gradients at the free surface generate too high turbulence when using eddy viscosity models like the k-ε or the k-ω model. In the past turbulence damping (symmetric damping procedures for the solid wall-like damping of turbulence in both gas and liquid phases) were introduced within the Algebraic Interfacial Area Density (AIAD) model into the three-dimensional (3-D) computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code ANSYS-CFX. The AIAD approach allows the use of different models depending on the local morphology. In the frame of an Euler-Euler simulation, the local morphology of the phases has to be considered for instance in the interfacial drag formulation.
A further step of improvement of modelling the turbulence is the consideration of small wave turbulence that means waves created by Kelvin-Helmholtz instabilities that are smaller than the grid size. So fare in the present code versions they are neglected. However, the influence on the turbulence kinetic energy of the liquid side can be significantly large. A region of marginal breaking is defined according Brocchini and Peregrine and added as a source term in the turbulent kinetic energy equation.
This paper presents first CFD-simulations on horizontal multiphase flows using the new modelling approach.