Wall friction in annular-dispersed two-phase flow Original Research Article

Modeling of wall-liquid film friction in annular and annular-dispersed two-phase flow regimes, and its effect on the performance of two-fluid models are addressed. It is shown that calculation of the wall friction based on the frictional pressure gradient, found from the widely applied empirical correlations for two-phase frictional pressure drop, can lead to significant underprediction of the liquid film thickness, and can result in the prediction of unphysical hydrodynamic characteristics for the film. In contrast a method which models wall-liquid film friction by applying the shear stress-shearing strain relation based on the film velocity profile is shown to adequately predict the liquid film hydrodynamic characteristics.