French Chair at the State University of Rio de Janeiro
The modelling of rising bubbles in tubes or pipes is an important
challenge, specifically in complex geometries, such pipes of non-uniform
diameter. Such phenomena can be observed in oil wells or food
processing. The objective of this study is to quantify experimentally
and simulate numerically the rising of fluid in another immiscible fluid
in a vertical conical pipe.
It is well know that there are several rising regimes depending on the
bubble size, the tube diameter, the fluid densities, viscosities and the
surface tension. There are few quantitative studies using conical pipes.
The goal of this project is to compare some experiments conducted in
France and the finite-element arbitrary Lagrangien-Eulerian method that
was developed in Rio de Janeiro. The study proposed here is fundamental
and aims at improving our understanding of dynamical behaviour of
two-phase flow. The outcomes of this knowledge can have an impact on the
petroleum and chemical sectors, but can also benefit to renewable energy
and environmental engineering.