Multiphase CFD-simulation of Bubbly Pipe Flow: A Code Comparison

CFD simulations of dispersed bubbly flow on the scale of technical equipment become feasible within the Eulerian two-fluid framework of interpenetrating continua. For practical applications suitable closure relations are required which describe the interfacial exchange processes. Implementations of such closures have been provided in major commercial codes for years, but more recently there is a growing interest also in open source packages among which in particular OpenFOAM has become widely known.
In the present work a set of closure relations suitable for adiabatic bubbly flow has been implemented in OpenFOAM. Selection of closure models has been based on previous experience with ANSYS-CFX. Great effort has been made to match all details of the models so that the same results may be expected and residual differences are only due to different numerical procedures. In this way the new open source implementation is validated and shown to be competitive with commercial codes.