AN APPLICATION OF THE METHOD OF MOMENTS TO THE MODELING OF BUBBLY FLOW

M GIMÉNEZ; A CLAUSSE

ANNALS OF NUCLEAR ENERGY

Elsevier

Año: 2005 vol. 32 p. 1705 - 1718

0306-4549

Bubbly flows are relevant in nuclear reactors thermalhydraulics and safety analysis. Regularly, empirical constitutive laws are required to close the two-fluid equations, particularly in relating the interfacial area and the bubble number densities to the local void fraction. In this article, starting from a generalized Boltzmann transport equation for the bubble size spectrum, a convection equation for the bubble number density is derived using the method of moments. The equation is analyzed for a vertical bubbly flow in stagnated liquid, showing excellent agreement with experimental data. The model is useful as a mean to provide conservation-based correlations to complement the existing two-fluid models.