Development of Interfacial Area Transport Equation, Modeling and Experimental Benchmark

Abstract

A dynamic treatment of interfacial area concentration has been studied over the last decade by employing the interfacial area transport equation. When coupled with the two-fluid model, the interfacial area transport equation replaces the flow regime dependent correlations for interfacial area concentration and eliminates potential artificial bifurcation or numerical oscillations stemming from these static correlations. An extensive database has been established to evaluate the model under various two-phase flow conditions. These include adiabatic and heated conditions, vertical and horizontal flow orientations, round, rectangular, annulus and 8x8 rod bundle channel geometries, and normal-gravity and simulated reducedgravity conditions. This paper reviews the current state-of-the-art in the development of the interfacial area transport equation, available experimental databases and 1D and 3D benchmarking work of the interfacial area transport equation.