An improved semi-empirical friction model for gas-liquid two-phase flow in horizontal and near horizontal pipes

Abstract

ABSTRACT: Pressure drop and liquid hold-up are two very important fluid flow parameters in design and control of multiphase flow pipelines. Friction factors play an important role in the accurate calculation of pressure drop. Various empirical and semi-empirical closure relations exist in the literature to calculate the liquid-wall, gas-wall and interfacial friction in two-phase pipe flow. However most of them are empirical correlations found under special experimental conditions. In this paper by modification of a friction model available in the literature, an improved semi-empirical model is proposed. The proposed model is incorporated in the two-fluid correlations under equilibrium conditions and solved. Pressure gradient and velocity profiles are validated against experimental data. Using the improved model, the pressure gradient deviation from experiments diminishes by about 3%; the no-slip condition at the interface is satisfied and the velocity profile is predicted in better agreement with the experimental data.

Keywords

• Friction factor
• Numerical simulation
• Semi-empirical friction model
• Two-phase flow
• Two-fluid model