Gravity-driven motion of a swarm of bubbles in a vertical pipe

Abstract

In this work, Direct Numerical Simulations of gravity-driven motion of a swarm of bubbles in a vertical pipe are presented. These simulations were carried out in the contex of a multiple marker level-set methodology, which is integrated in a finite volume framework on collocated unstructured grids. Each fluid particle is described by a separate level-set function, thus, different interfaces can be solved at the same control volume, avoiding the coalescence of the bubbles. Present simulations have been performed in a periodic vertical domain divided in 21E6 hexahedral control volumes, distributed in 2048 CPUs. Collective and individual behaviour of the bubbles are characterized and compared with previous results reported in the literature for other flow configurations.