Publikationsrepositorium - Helmholtz-Zentrum Dresden-Rossendorf

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) is an accepted tool for design and optimisation in many single-phase flow applications, e.g. in automotive or aviation industries. In principle, CFD has the same potential also for multiphase flows, but it is not yet mature for routine applications because of the complexity of such flows. For medium and large scale industrial applications the Euler-Euler approach is most suited and the interactions between the phases have to be reflected by closure models. In bubbly flows such interactions between the liquid flow field and the deformable bubble interfaces have an important influence on the flow characteristics. CFD-models should depend on local flow characteristics as e.g. shear rate, turbulence, and bubble sizes. Locally such properties may be very similar even in quite different flow situations like bubbly pipe flows, bubble columns or air-lift reactors. Instead of case by case tuning the development of a unified model for bubbly flows seems to be a promising way to increase the reliability of predictions obtained from CFD-simulations. Such a model was established at HZDR and has been applied to many different bubbly flow situations without any modification. This contribution presents this model and some examples for application to different industrial relevant bubbly flows.