Hydrodynamics of two-phase flow in a rod bundle under cross-flow condition

Pressure drop experiments were conducted for a vertical two-phase air-water flow across a horizontal staggered rod bundle under conditions of air quality ranging from 0.001 to 0.3 and mass velocity ranging from 80 to 500 kg/(m² s). The experimental data were thoroughly analyzed and compared with predictions from existing correlations. New developed expressions provided the most accurate predictions. The two-phase friction multipliers for G ≤ 200 kg/(m² s), which show a strong mass velocity effect, could be fit well in terms of the Martinelli parameter and the dimensionless mass velocity. The new correlation developed for the two-phase friction multiplier was successfully tested in predicting the experimental data for G ≤ 200 kg/(m² s) in previous experiments of other researchers. Distributions of velocity and turbulent intensity were also obtained from the numerical simulation on single-phase flow of water using the CFD code ANSYS FLUENT 14.0. The SST k-ω model was verified to be the best turbulent model to gain flow characteristics in the horizontal rod bundle under experimental conditions.