Pressure wave propagation in air-water bubbly and slug flow

Related to nuclear reactor safety problems, such as the loss of coolant accident caused by some small crevasses in nuclear reactor, choked flows after postulated breaks of hot and cold legs of pressurized water reactors and the boiling flow instability in parallel channels, the characteristics of pressure wave propagation were investigated experimentally for the air-water bubbly and slug two-phase flow in a vertical pipe. Pressure wave was generated from the small pressure disturbance by the up-and-down movement of piston in the test section. Air void fraction was up to 0.7 and superficial liquid velocity was up to 1.5 m/s as experimental conditions. The experimental results show that the pressure wave propagation velocity in bubbly flow decreases acutely with the increase of air void fraction from 0 to 0.05. In slug flow, it is constant when the air void fraction is less than 0.5 but increases gradually when the void fraction increases beyond 0.5. The attenuation coefficient of pressure wave increases with the increase of air void fraction in bubbly flow. The dependency of pressure wave propagation velocity on angle frequency ω in air-water flow shows the dispersion characteristic. The propagation velocity and attenuation coefficient increases gradually with the increase of angle frequency. However, the increase vanishes slowly as the angle frequency reaches 250 Hz in bubbly flow. The propagation of pressure wave in bubbly flow is independent of the superficial velocity of fluids in the range of experiment.