Film thickness of vertical upward co-current adiabatic flow in pipes

Average liquid film thickness is important for detailed mechanistic modeling of annular two-phase flow in engineering applications. The existing models and correlations either have large relative errors or narrow application range. Because of this, a new liquid film thickness model has been developed for vertical annular flow in pipes based on three databases. The model includes the pressure, liquid and gas velocities, diameter, and viscosity effects on liquid film thickness. Analysis indicates the film thickness to be a function of Weber numbers for both liquid and gas, and the viscosity number. The model is compared with film thickness data which considers a wide range of liquid and gas superficial velocities, system pressure, fluid properties, as well as several pipe diameters. The trend in the current and available film thickness models at various system conditions are analyzed, highlighting the improvement and widening applicability of the new model. The newly proposed film thickness model results in an average relative error of 14% considering the complete database. (C) 2015 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.