Fluidelastic Instability Forces in a Triangular Tube Bundle Subjected to Two-Phase Cross Flow

Abstract

Despite the discovery of fluidelastic instability in two-phase flows nearly three decades ago, little is known about the underlying mechanisms when two fluid phases are involved. Current knowledge (the state of the art) is based on the assumption that the nature of fluidelastic instability, and in particular the underlying fluid forces and excitation mechanisms are very similar if not identical to their single phase flow counterparts. There is, however, clear evidence to the contrary. Recent measurements by Mureithi et al.(2002) have shown that the fluid force field can be drastically different for two-phase flows. In particular, the force field is not a simple function of the reduced flow velocity U/fD. In the work reported here, the quasi-static fluid force field is measured in a rotated triangular tube bundle for a series of void fractions and flow velocities. It is found that the reduced velocity U/fD, where U is the homogeneous mixture velocity, does not collapse the data for different void fractions (or correspondingly, fluid densities). The forces are strongly dependent on void fraction, flow rates and relative tube positions. The steady drag increases with void fraction up to approximately 60% void fraction and then gradually decreases at higher void fractions. Besides the force magnitudes, the derivatives of the forces with respect to tube positions also vary significantly with void fraction. These derivatives are particularly important since they represent inter-tube interaction and hence directly affect the stability behavior. The present work uncovers some of the complexity of the fluid force field in two-phase flows. The data are valuable since they are the necessary inputs to the class of quasi-static and quasi-steady fluidelastic instability theoretical models. The application of these models is the longer-term goal of the present work. To the authors' knowledge, this is the first time that the quasi-static force field for two-phase flows is reported in the open literature.