Characteristics of Two-Phase Flow in Packed Bed Systems

Two-phase pressure drop in the debris has been studied by many researchers in relation to the debris cooling characteristics during a severe accident in a nuclear reactor. However, its flow regime transition of the two-phase flow in the debris has not been well understood, which strongly affects the interfacial drag and the pressure drop. Conventional models for gas-liquid two-phase flow pressure drop have not been established well to evaluate interfacial drag accurately. In this study, high-speed imaging of a two-dimensional network model was performed to clarify the effect of flow pattern on interfacial drag and pressure drop. Normally it would be very difficult to visualize such two-phase flow behavior in an ordinary packed bed due to the reflection/refraction of light and/or overlapping bubbles, even if the test section is made of transparent materials. Therefore, in this study, a test section, which simulates two-dimensional network of porous structures, was fabricated to avoid the overlapping bubbles. By using a high-speed imaging of the two-dimensional network model, two-phase flow pattern in the porous structure have been identified. From the experimental results, it was suggested that the interfacial drag term should be modified in the gas-liquid two-phase flow pressure drop model.

Correction to: Effect of interfacial drag force model on code prediction for upward adiabatic two-phase bubbly flow in vertical channels

The article “Effect of interfacial drag force model on code prediction for upward adiabatic two-phase bubbly flow in vertical channels” written by Takashi Hibiki and Tetsuhiro Ozaki, was originally published electronically on the publisher’s internet portal (currently SpringerLink) on 04 January 2020 without open access. After publication in Volume 2, Issue 4, page 212–224, the author(s) decided to opt for Open Choice and to make the article an open access publication. Therefore, the copyright of the article has been changed to © The Author(s) 2020 and the article is forthwith distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits use, duplication, adaptation, distribution and reproduction in any medium or format, as long as you give appropriate credit to the original author(s) and the source, provide a link to the Creative Commons license, and indicate if changes were made.