The turbulent mixing rate and the fluctuations of static pressure difference between adjacent subchannels in a two-phase subchannel flow Original Research Article

Turbulent mixing rate between adjacent subchannels in a two-phase flow has been known to be strongly dependent on the flow pattern. In this study, flow visualization was made to investigate the mechanism of the turbulent mixing between subchannels in a two-phase flow under hydrodynamic equilibrium conditions. The test channel was a vertical multiple channel consisting of two identical rectangular subchannels, and the working fluids were air and water. It was observed in slug-churn flows that a large scale inter-subchannel liquid flow occurs in front of the nose of a large gas bubble and behind the tail when the bubble axially passes through the subchannel, and thus a high turbulent mixing rate of the liquid phase results. In order to know driving force of such a large scale inter-subchannel flow, measurement of instantaneous static pressure difference between the subchannels was also made. The result showed that there is a close relationship between the liquid phase turbulent mixing rate and the magnitude of the pressure difference fluctuations.