Numerical simulation method to resolve interactions between bubbles and turbulence

A new computational method for investigating interactions between bubbles and turbulence has been developed. Both liquid and gas phases are treated as incompressible fluids and solved by a finite volume method, while the interface between the phases is resolved by a front-tracking method. The accuracy validation carried out for a problem of a single rising bubble has shown this method is capable of simulating flow around deformed bubbles with relatively small number of grid points. Then the method was applied to a direct numerical simulation of a fully developed turbulent channel flow containing bubbles. Statistics of the friction coefficient and the modulation of turbulence intensity were obtained, and they were in qualitative agreement with experiments.