Local characteristics of horizontal oil-water two-phase flow: A comparision of CFD simulation and measurement

We study the local characteristics of horizontal oil-water two-phase flow. In this study, we conduct an experimental method and numerical simulation to investigate flow structure and local phase volume fraction in a horizontal pipe with inner diameter 20mm. In a perpendicular direction to the pipe axis, we use 8 mini-conductance probes to obtain the conductance waveform and calculate the local oil holdup by using self-adjustment double threshold method. Furthermore, we use CFD method to calculate local oil holdup through VOF model and k-ε turbulence model. The results show that the simulated local oil holdup has a good agreement with the measurement by mini-conductance probes, which verifies the numerical simulation is reliable to extract the local oil holdup in horizontal oil-water two-phase flow pipe.