Publications Repository - Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf

A typical feature of nuclear safety facilities are multiphase flows with coexisting morphologies, i.e. with phases which occur both in a continuous form (such as in a stratified flow) and in a disperse form (bubbles or droplets). Established simulation methods are usually suitable for either resolved structures (e.g., Volume-of-Fluid) or dispersed structures (e.g., Euler-Euler). We propose a morphology adaptive multifield two-fluid model, which is able to handle both disperse and resolved interfacial structures coexisting in a common computational domain, covered by a unified set of equations. This requires (A) a careful selection of closure models. On the continuous side, the interfacial drag formulation of Štrubelj and Tiselj (Int J Numer Methods Eng, 2011, 85, 575-590) is used to describe large interfacial structures in a volume-of-fluid-like manner. For the dispersed structures, the HZDR baseline model is applied. Meller et al. (Int J for Numer Method Fluid, 2021, 93, 748-773) and Tekavčič et al. (Nucl Eng Des, 379, 111223) presented several test cases to prove that the numerical consistent coexistence of different morphologies is ensured. The interaction of the morphologies is only controlled by the aforementioned closure models without being disturbed by numerical effects. A second requirement is (B) a reliable transition between continuous and disperse states, depending on the size of the structures and the degree of spatial resolution. This is subject of the current work. A prerequisite for reliable transitions is the stable coverage of intermediate situations, where bubbles are either over- or under-resolved for Euler-Euler or Volume-of-Fluid (Fig. 1). An adaptive interfacial drag model and a filtering technique are applied for stable and robust handling of the transition regions. Two morphology transfer models are established, allowing large resolved structures to disintegrate into small unresolved fluid particles and, vice versa, the accumulation of disperse fluid particles to continuous large-scale structures. This is applied to generic verification and validation test cases, representing typical sub-problems relevant in safety facilities. The model is applied to a cyclic separator (Fig. 2), which can only be simulated with methods allowing the transition from a disperse to a continuous morphology. This is particularly challenging because the gas core must exhibit a stable behavior in the highly rotating flow while gas and liquid are moving in opposite directions along the rotational axis.