Multiphase CFD activities at Helmholtz–Zentrum Dresden – Rossendorf

Multiphase flows are frequently applied in industrial processes as e.g. in chemical engineering, oil industries or power plants. Reliable predictions of the flow characteristics such as local concentration of species, interfacial area density or heat transfer in gas-liquid flows can contribute to an optimization of the design of corresponding apparatuses and processes. While Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is frequently used for industrial problems in case of single phase flows, it is not yet mature for two-phase flows. The reason is the complex gas-liquid interface. For medium and large scale flow domains it is not feasible to resolve all details of this interface. Averaging procedures have to be applied and in most cases the so-called two- or multi-fluid approach is used. It assumes interpenetrating phases and the information on the interface gets lost by these averaging procedures. This information has to be added to the basic balance equations by so-called closure models. The development and validation of general frameworks as well as closure models is done at Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden – Rossendorf (HZDR) to obtain tools for reliable predictions of multiphase flow characteristics in medium and large industrial scales.
In this talk the HZDR-strategy for the CFD-model development and validation for multiphase flows with focus on gas-liquid flows is presented.