Proceedings of the Twenty-ninth (2019) International Ocean and Polar Engineering Conference www.isope.

org
Honolulu, Hawaii, USA, June 16-21, 2019
Copyright © 2019 by the International Society of Offshore and Polar Engineers (ISOPE)
ISBN 978-1 880653 85-2; ISSN 1098-6189

Modelling of liquid-solid flow in horizontal pipe applying computational fluid dynamics method
Sihang Chen1, Jie Zhang1, Bingyuan Hong1, Xu Duan1, Shilin Chen2, Jing Gong1*
1. National Engineering Laboratory for Pipeline Safety, China University of Petroleum-Beijing
Beijing, China
2. China United Coalbed Methane Corporation Ltd./ CNOOC China Limited, Unconventional Oil & Gas Branch
Beijing, China

ABSTRACT
This paper aims to investigate the liquid-solid flow characteristics in
the pipeline by employing the commercial Computational Fluid
Dynamics (CFD) code Fluent 19.0. To validate the simulation model,
the two-layer model and the experiment by Matousek (2002) are cited
and the relevant experimental data are compared with the Fluent model.
The pressure drop characteristics will be investigated in this paper and
the pressure gradient valley-point, which has a profound meaning of the
solid-liquid flow transportation, appears around the conversion point of
the flow pattern of the solid-liquid flow, and the different flow patterns
are analyzed to explain the valley-point better as well. Besides, various
sizes of the particles were included in the model, which means the
influence of different sizes of the sand mixing on the solid-liquid flow
characteristics were investigated.
KEY WORDS: Solid-liquid flow; flow pattern; two-layer model;
pressure gradient; valley-point; computational fluid dynamics (CFD)
INTRODUCTION
The flow in the pipeline are not always gaseous or liquid, but often
include solid such as small particles, especially in the territory of
petroleum exploitation, the oil and gas are transported in the wellbore
with the cuttings, other example in the sub-sea is the gas hydrate slurry
(Bohui Shi et.al, 2018; Shangfei Song et.al, 2019) transported in the
conduit, also, it’s the flow with solid and liquid where the flow
characteristics are dramatically influenced by the solid phase. Speaking
of which, there are three flow patterns in the solid-liquid flow, and the
flow characteristics vary from different patterns.
Very many scientists had investigated the solid-liquid flow patterns.
Fully suspended flow pattern was brought up by Durand (1953), then
Condolilios and Chapus (1963) made the explanation of two-layer flow
where there are two flowing layers, one of them is fully suspended flow
layer while another layer is settled solid-bed but still moves with flow.
Later, Bain and Bonnington (1970), Turian and Yuan (1977) also
investigated the two-layer flow and called the moving bed layer the
saltation, and Vocaldo and Charles (1972) investigated the suspension
layer which were divided into two conditions, homogeneous flow and
heterogeneous flow, later, Goedde (1978) analyzed the heterogeneous
and sliding flow. The two flow patterns were the only two patterns
discussed in the solid-liquid flow until the third layer, which was a new
layer with the stationary solid-bed, was brought forward in 1970 (Ayazi
Shamlau, 1970), and Parzonka et.al (1981) investigated the stationary
bed as well. Brown (1991), Lazarus and Neilson (1978) and Ercolani
et.al. (1979) started to put the suspension flow and the layered flow
together and made the investigation, later, Doron and Barnea (1996)
made the general classification of the flow patterns based on the solid
distribution in the transportation line: (a) fully suspended flow with two
sub patterns-pseudo homogeneous and heterogeneous flow, (b) flow
with moving bed, and (c) flow with a stationary bed including saltation.
Since there are different type of layers in each pattern, the effective
parameters of pressure drop characteristics will be dramatically
influenced by the pattern of the flow. There are three basic flow
patterns of the solid-liquid flow: stratified flow, two-layer flow and
three-layer flow, and the layer, which often indicates the solid-formed
layer, is divided into two categories, one is moving layer which can
flow with the liquid phase, another is stationary layer that lies on the
inner bottom of the pipe and will not move with the flow. Therefore,
the principles of calculating the frictional parameters will varied from
the flow patterns, so the pressure drop will fluctuate with the change of
the flow pattern and will experience a conversion point between the
fully suspended flow and two-layer flow, and during that pattern
conversion, there will be a minimum pressure drop point which will be
discussed in this paper.
We will take the data from the experiment of investigating solid-liquid
flow in inclined pipe by Matousek (2002), and analyze the hydraulic
characteristic of horizontal pipe with the different size particles mixing,
the flow behavior is discussed based on the experiment. However, little
is known about the distribution and dispersion of different particles in

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such pipe, and this lack of information on the particle parameters at
different locations of pipe is mostly due to the unsophisticated
equipment for measuring these data. While optical, sampling,
radioactive, and conductivity based methods exist to measure local
concentrations of particles (see reviews by Tamburini et.al, 2013), the
deviation of the measuring result, however, is relatively high, which
means their accuracy is limited and, more significantly, they cannot
reliably measure the particle concentration throughout the entire pipe.
FLOW PATTERN IN SOLID-LIQUID PIPE FLOW
Fig. 1 Schematic presentation of flow patterns and concentration
distributions in normal direction to flow (a) fully suspended flow, (b)
two-layer flow (flow with moving bed), (c) three-layer flow (flow with
a stationary bed). (Sumer, M, P and Serife, S, H 2008).
When the particles are mixed with the liquid and flow in the pipe with a
relevant high speed, the particles will not drop down to the bottom of
the pipe, instead, they are suspended in the liquid, therefore, the
flowing characteristics like velocity etc. are the identical, and the
mixing flow can be regard as the homogenous suspension flow, in other
word, the single phase flow (Fig. 1 (a-1)). When descending the flow
rate, some of the particles will cluster around the bottom, leading to the
ascending of the particle concentration of the pipe bottom, but the
amounts of the gathering particles are not sufficient to form a layer,
nevertheless, the flow can be regard as the fully suspension flow, it
turns from homogeneous one to heterogeneous one (Fig. 1 (a-2)).
However, if we keep slowing down the velocity of the particles under a
threshold, the suspended particles will tend to drop down to the bottom
and form a sand layer which will still move with the flow (Fig. 1 (b)),
and this threshold is called the limit deposit velocity. The packed layer
moves along the lower wall, and a heterogeneous suspension forming
the upper layer flows in the rest of the duct (Sumer, M, P and Serife, S,
H 2008).
When we further decrease the velocity, the stationary sand layer will be
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revealed since the flow rate of suspension are so low that it cannot
transport all the particles, which means there will be some part of the
sand that cannot move, then a new layer can be formed. So there’re
totally three layers in such circumstance, those particles still suspend in
the liquid form the first layer, and the second one is consist of the
particles in the moving bed, the rest of the particles, which cannot
move, form the third layer (Fig. 1 (c)).
What we want to investigate in this paper is the conversion between the
fully suspension flow and the two-layer flow, so the three-layer flow
will not be discussed here.
COMPUTATIONAL MODEL
The computational model was built based on the experiment carried out
by Matousek (2002) which included the vertical and horizontal loop,
the model simulated the horizontal and straight part of this loop, and
the experimental data and simulation results will be compared and
discussed in this paper.
Flow Domain
The modelling of the slurry pipeline was done by ANSYS Fluent 19.0
software. The diameter of the pipe was considered as 150-mm, and
three different sizes of particles (d50 = 0.12, 0.37 and 1.85-mm) were
mixed with the liquid flow. The particles, as the disperse version, are
homogeneously mixed with the liquid phase and put into the pipe with
the normal direction of the inlet, and the concentration of the particles
was between 13% and 34% so that there was a good agreement with the
experiment conditions.
Schematic presentation of flow patterns and concentration distribution
in the normal direction of flow (a) fully suspended flow, (b) two-layer
flow (flow with moving bed), (c) three-layer flow (flow with a
stationary bed). (Sumer, M, P and Serife, S, H 2008).
CFD-DEM Model
The whole simulation was the combination of the Computational Fluid
Dynamics Model and Discrete Element Model (DEM), while the
former was applied to calculate the liquid phase while the latter was
employed to simulate the motion of the particles (Shibo, K et.al 2019).
Both two models, however, would conclude the control equations as
the momentous conservation equations and continuity conservation
equations, which means the motion and flow behavior of the liquid
phase and solid phase was simulated by the two models mentioned
above respectively, and then they would be coupled to describe the
solid-liquid mixing flow in a more accurately way (Bruno, B et.al
2017).
Governing Equations for DEM
There are more than one mechanics factor that poses the effect to the
discrete phase in the DEM, which means the forces acting on the
particles are complicated, some forces, such as buoyance, magnus lift
force will offer the particles the upward acceleration, while the force
like gravitational force will provide the opposite-direction one, what’s
more, the drag force and shear stress will affect the moving-direction
motion of the particles, and the particles will rotate if there are torque
acting on them (Liu-chao, Q and Chuan-yu, W 2014).. Some of these
forces will be considered in this model and we will discuss them later.
According to the Newton’s second law of motion, the governing
equations for the translational motion can be written as:
 solid interaction forces involving particle i: drag force (fd,i), pressure
du gradient force (f∇p,i), viscous force (f∇τ, i), Archimedes force (fAr,i),
mi i =  f c ,ij +  flr ,ik + f pf,i + f g,i (1)
dt j k
virtual mass force (fvm,i), Basset force (fB,i), Saffman lift force (fSaff,i),
and Magnus lift force (fMag,i). The pressure, viscous, and Archimedes
forces are removed from Fpf since they are included directly in the
And the rotational motion of particle can be written as: continuous expression of form of the VANS equations.

d  p ,i
Ii =  (M t,ij + M r,ij ) (2) Solid-Liquid Coupling
dt j
(a) Particle Force Balance
Where mi is the mass of the single particle, Ii the moment of inertia of The DEM model applies Lagrange discrete phase capabilities to predict
particle, fc,ij the contact forces between particles i and j, flr,ik the non- the trajectory of a discrete phase particle by integrating the force
contact (long-range) forces between particles i and k, fpf,i the particle- balance on the particle, which is written in a Lagrange reference frame.
fluid interaction forces, fg,i the gravitational force (fg,i= mig), and Mt,ij This force balance equates the particle inertia with the forces acting on
and Mr,ij the tangential and rolling friction torques acting on particles i the particle, and can be written as:
and j.
However, considering the size of the particle and regarding all the du p u − up g ( p −  )
= + +F (7)
particles are electrically neutral in this paper, some non-contacted dt r p
forces such as Van der Waal force, force between charged particles and
the force due to electrostatic field are neglected. So the motion of the Where F is an additional acceleration (force/unit particle mass) term,
particles are only related to the contact force, and there are two types of (u-up)/τr is the drag force per unit particle mass and:
the force between two particles: normal (fcn,ij) and tangential (fct,ij) (Zhu
et.al, 2007) components, they can be written as:
 pd p2 24
r = + (8)
18 Cd Re
f c ,ij = f cn,ij + f ct,ij = −kn,ij n,ij −  n,ij n' ,ij − k t,ij t,ij −  t,ij t,' ij (3)
Here, τr is the droplet or particle relaxation time, u is the fluid phase
Where kn,ij and kt,ij are the normal and tangential stiffness coefficients, velocity, up is the particle velocity, μ is the molecular viscosity of the
γn,ij and γt,ij the normal and tangential damping coefficients, δn,ij and δt,ij fluid, ρ is the fluid density, ρp is the density of the particle, and dp is the
the normal and tangential overlaps, and δ’n,ij and δ’t,ij are their particle diameter. Re is the relative Reynolds number, which is defined
derivatives with respect to time. as:

Governing Equations for CFD d p u − up

Re  (9)
The liquid phase in the simulation is pure water, and the incompressible 
volume-averaged Navier-Stokes (VANS) equations are employed to
describe the liquid phase (Gidaspow, 1994). A filtering kernel (Sagaut, (b) Particle Torque Balance
2006) is applied to these equations, leading to the following filtered Particle rotation is a natural part of particle motion and can have a
VANS equations: significant influence on the trajectory of a particle moving in a fluid.
The impact is even more pronounced for large and/or heavy particles
 f with high moments of inertia. In this case, if particle rotation is
+   ( f u ) = 0 disregarded in simulation studies, the resulting particle trajectories can
t
(  f  f u)
(4) significantly differ from the actual particle paths. To account for
+   (  f  f u  u ) = − f p +   +   sgs − Fpf particle rotation, an additional ordinary differential equation (ODE) for
t the particle’s angular momentum is solved:

Where εf is the void fraction, ρf is the density of the fluid, p the filtered d p f  f 
5

pressure and u the filtered velocity. The viscous stress tensor τ is Ip =   C  = T (10)
defined as: dt 2  2 

2 Where Ip is the moment of inertia, ωp is the particle angular velocity, ρ f

 =  f  ((u ) + (u )T − (  u ) k ) (5) is the fluid density, dp is the particle diameter, Cω is the rotational drag
3
coefficient, T is the torque applied to a particle in a fluid domain, and Ω
is the relative particle–fluid angular velocity calculated by:
Where μ is the dynamic viscosity and δk is the identity tensor. The
momentum exchange term from the particles to the fluid, Fpf and fpf,i , 1
 =   u f − p (11)
are defined as: 2
n For a spherical particle, the moment of inertia Ip is calculated as:
1 p
Fpf =
V i
 f pf ,i − fp,i − f ,i − f Ar ,i (6)

f pf,i = f d ,i + fp ,i + f ,i + f Ar ,i + f vm,i + f B,i + f Saff ,i + f Mag,i Ip =  f d p5 (12)
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Where np is the number of particles and fpf,i is the sum of all the fluid–
From Equation 10-12, it is apparent that the torque T results from

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equilibrium between the particle inertia and the drag.
(c) Applying of Gravity Term
While equations mentioned above include the gravity force acted on the
particle, since the default gravitational acceleration is zero in ANSYS
Fluent, the employing the gravity force become indispensable for the
simulation. We can set the gravity term in the acceleration settings in
the ANSYS Fluent by putting the figure of gravity acceleration into the
corresponding axis representing the vertical direction.
The Viscous Model
The first step based on the CFD prediction model is the flow field
simulation of the carrier fluid. The flow regime of the carrier fluid of
the experiment by Matousek (2002) is turbulent flow. The turbulent
flow has the characteristics of the pulsating velocity field. The
pulsating velocity component caused by the turbulent vortex random
motion will cause the additional shear stress (Reynolds stress
component) which is difficult to calculate, so that the continuity
equation, the momentum equation and the energy equation cannot be
closed. Therefore, different calculation methods must be employed to
solve the Navier-Stokes equation to simplify the Reynolds stress
component, thus there will be different turbulence models.
There are several viscous models including Spalart-Allmaras Model, k-
ε Model (standard k-ε Model, Realizable k-ε Model, RNG k-ε Model),
k-ω Model (standard k-ω Model, SST k-ω Model) (Gritskevich, M. S.
et.al, 2012), RSM and LES in the ANSYS Fluent 19.0, we will apply
those models considering the compressibility of fluid, calculation
accuracy, and computer equipment performance in different cases. The
Shear-Stress-Transport (SST) model was designed to give highly
accurate predictions of the onset and the amount of flow separation
under adverse pressure gradients by the inclusion of transport effects
into the formulation of the eddy-viscosity. Therefore, the SST model is
recommended for accurate boundary layer simulation. Since the case
we simulate included the two-layer flow and the layer formation, the
SST model was employed as the viscous model.
The Multiphase Model
Considering of the solid-liquid flow, the Model of Multiphase (Hayder,
I, M et.al 2019) are turned on, and there are several subordinate models
can be chosen: Model of Volume of Fluid (VOF), Model of Mixture
(Manninen, M. et.al, 1996) and Model of Eulerian. The VOF model is
suitable for stratified flow or free interface flow, mainly used in free
surface flow, large bubble flow in liquid, etc., and to obtain steady state
or transient interface of any gas-liquid interface. The Mixture Model
and the Eulerian model are suitable for conditions where the flow has
mixed or separated, or the relevant-high volume fraction of the discrete
phase.
In the Model of Mixture, the phases of which are used as a continuum
that runs through each other. The Mixture Model needs to solve the
momentum equation of the mixture and use the relative velocity to
represent the discrete phase.
As the most complex multiphase flow model in Fluent, the Euler model
establishes a set of governing equations that cover N momentum
equations and continuous equations to solve each phase. The pressure
term and the interface exchange coefficients are coupled to each other.
Considering the case we simulated is the horizontal and straight pipe
without any complex part such as riser and elbow, and to make the
simulation more accurately, and the numerical calculation more
stability of, easier convergence, and the stronger phase-to-phase
coupling as well, the applying of the Mixture Model is reasonable and
suitable for the case.
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BOUNDARY CONDITIONS
Boundary conditions (generally called BC) are the key parameters to
the CFD simulation, reasonable BC will contribute to the rational
results and swift convergence.
(a) The BC relating to the fluid should be set at first, to fit the
experiment well (Matousek, 2002), we set our Inlet Condition as the
velocity inlet and pressure outlet so that we can control the velocity of
the pipe flow to provide the experiment conditions. The range of
velocity was from 1 to 8 m/s.
(b) The BC relating to the discrete particles should be set as well, there
are three models in the ANSYS Fluent 19.0: Escape Model means the
particles will flow through the bounce and vanish, Trap Model is that
the particles will be caught and trapped at the bounce, and Reflect
Model is that the particles will bounce when they hit the boundary.
MODEL ESTABLISHING AND MESHING
The model establishing and meshing was based on the equipment of the
experiment (Matousek, 2002), it was the 150-mm pipe with the 24-m-
long test loop, and both measuring sections of the test loop were 3-m
long and were equipped with a differential pressure transmitter and a
radiometric density meter. The model we built was the straight and
horizontal pipe measuring 9-m. The quantity of the grids along the pipe
flow direction was the magnitude of 100 which means we had set
hundreds of sensors pipe-axially while there were just 3 pressure
sensors in such pipe of the experiment, so the model will show the
much more accurate feature of the hydraulic features such as the
pressure drop of which.
The number and quality of grids directly affect the accuracy and speed
of numerical calculations (Flavio, G et.al 2019). The meshing is mainly
divided into structured grids and unstructured grids. For complex
engineering problems, although the volume of structured grid
production is large, the calculation amount is small, which can better
control the mesh generation quality and ensure the quality of the
boundary layer mesh, so that the distortion is minimized, and the
calculation is easier to converge.
In the research of this subject, the research object is a straight pipe, so it
is divided by a hexahedral mesh. Besides, considering the particles of
the two-layer flow in the pipeline mainly appear near the inner wall
surface of the pipe, the boundary layer grid near the inner wall of the
circumference of the pipe is required to be high, and local encryption is
required, however, the grids of axial of Z direction are divided into the
identical length. Fig.2 shows the meshing of the pipe profile, and Fig.3
shows the meshing of the middle of the pipe model.
Fig. 2 Mesh Generation for Pipe Profile

Fig. 3 Mesh Generation for the Middle of Horizontal Pipe Model
The quantity of whole grids was about 120000, and the Minimum
Orthogonal Quality is 75.1% and the mean figure was over 90%.
Meanwhile, the Maximum Ortho Skewness was 24.9%, and the mean
figure was under 15%, therefore, the quality of the mesh was high
enough to provide the accurate simulation.
SIMULATION RESULTS AND DISCUSSION
Particle Concentration Distribution
In the ANSYS Fluent 19.0, all types of particles were injected into the
pipe uniformly from the inlet, and injecting direction was normal
direction of the inlet face. On account of applying for the gravity term,
the moving particles dropped down to the bottom of pipe under the low
flow rate, which would ascend the concentration of the particles at the
bottom, however, if the flow rate was high, those would not drop,
instead, the flow with high flow rate would disperse those particles,
making the volume fraction of the particle distribution more uniform in
the cross-section of the pipe. When the particle concentration of the
cross-section of the pipe was steady, we recorded the data.
Different cases included the velocity range of 2 m/s, 6 m/s and 30 m/s,
which could reveal the three flow conditions of the mixing flow, they
were the flow with moving bed, heterogeneous flow and homogeneous
flow respectively.
Fig. 4 Particle concentration in horizontal flow with coarse sand
mixture Cvd (delivered mean solids concentration in pipe cross-
section)= 0.13 under the velocity of 30 m/s
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Fig. 5 Particle concentration in horizontal flow with coarse sand
mixture Cvd= 0.13 under the velocity of 6 m/s
Fig. 6 Particle concentration in horizontal flow with coarse sand
mixture Cvd= 0.13 under the velocity of 2 m/s
Figs. 4-6 reveal the particle mass concentration of mixing flow with
different velocities when adding the coarse sand (Cvd= 0.13) only.
Obviously, when the velocity was 30 m/s (Fig. 4), the particles would
suspend in the flowing liquid homogenously with high turbulence, thus
the particle concentration of the entire cross-section is almost the same.
When slowing down the velocity to 6 m/s (Fig. 5), some of the particles
had dropped, and it is clear that there is the obvious concentration
gradient, the closer particles near the pipe bottom, the higher
concentration will be reached, even if the particle concentration is
relative-high around the bottom, there is no formed layer, which means
that the flow pattern stays at fully suspended flow. When further
decreased the velocity to 2 m/s, we can clearly observe that there is the
high-concentration red zone (Fig. 6), and there is the concentration
mutation between the red zone and the green zone, and this feature just
fit that of the stratified flow in Figure 1, thus the red zone is the space
where flows the moving bed layer. Still, the flow zone above the
moving bed is heterogeneous, if we keep slowing down the velocity,
there will be more particles drop to the red zone from the green zone,
meanwhile, those from the blue zone will drop to the green zone as
supplement. Consequently, the red zone will expand while the rest will
shrink.
Fig. 7 Particle concentration in horizontal flow with coarse sand
mixture Cvd= 0.26 (coarse sand (1.85-mm) Cvd = 0.13 + fine sand (0.27
mm) Cvd = 0.13) under the velocity of 30 m/s
Fig. 8 Particle concentration in horizontal flow with coarse sand Fig. 11 Particle concentration in horizontal flow with coarse sand
mixture Cvd= 0.26 (coarse sand (1.85-mm) Cvd = 0.13 + fine sand (0.27 mixture Cvd= 0.34 (coarse sand (1.85-mm) Cvd = 0.13 + fine sand (0.27
mm) Cvd = 0.13) under the velocity of 6 m/s mm) Cvd = 0.21) under the velocity of 6 m/s

Fig. 9 Particle concentration in horizontal flow with coarse sand Fig. 12 Particle concentration in horizontal flow with coarse sand
mixture Cvd= 0.26 (coarse sand (1.85-mm) Cvd = 0.13 + fine sand (0.27 mixture Cvd= 0.34 (coarse sand (1.85-mm) Cvd = 0.13 + fine sand (0.27
mm) Cvd = 0.13) under the velocity of 2 m/s mm) Cvd = 0.21) under the velocity of 2 m/s

When adding the fine particles into the flow, the changes are evident, When additional fine sand was added, the solids effect has shrunken
by comparing the Fig. 8 and Fig. 5, it can be observed that the particles again, by comparing Fig. 11 and Fig. 8, more fine sand will cause more
are dispersed to the area that near the top of the pipe, this is mainly uniform dispersion of the particles, and the yellow zone (Fig. 8) has
caused by the mixing of smaller-size particles. On account of the better shrunken, (Fig. 11), and by comparing Fig. 12 and Fig. 9, the layer
ability of dispersion, the flow tends to disperse more fine sand than the thickness becomes thinner and the green zone expand again, which
coarse one at same velocity, and there is the high possibility that the means more particles suspend in the water and tend to disperse into the
fine-size particles will collide with those coarse ones when they’re higher area of the pipe cross-section.
dispersed, thus some coarse-size particles will obtain extra kinetic
energy from them, in other words, they are synchronously dispersed by
the fine sand and the flowing water. The same conclusion that the
solids effect has been reduced can be drawn from comparing Fig. 9 and
Fig. 6, because the thickness of the moving bed has shrunken, also, the
green zone has expanded.

Fig. 13 Particle concentration distribution comparison between

experimental data and Fluent results in horizontal flow with coarse
sand Cvd= 0.13 at the velocity of 6 m/s

Fig. 10 Particle concentration in horizontal flow with coarse sand

mixture Cvd= 0.34 (coarse sand(1.85-mm) Cvd = 0.13 + fine sand (0.27
mm) Cvd = 0.21) under the velocity of 30 m/s

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Fig. 14 Particle concentration distribution comparison between
experimental data and Fluent results in horizontal flow with coarse
sand Cvd= 0.34 (coarse sand (1.85-mm) Cvd = 0.13 + fine sand (0.27
mm) Cvd = 0.21) at the velocity of 6 m/s
By means of comparing the experimental data and simulation results of
the particle concentration distribution of the cross-section, we can draw
the conclusion that they just fit well with each other, therefore, the
results of the particle concentration distribution of simulation are
validated.
Hydraulic gradient fitting and the valley-point
Fig. 15 Frictional head loss in horizontal flow with coarse sand mixture
Cvd= 0.13
The hydraulic gradient polyline of the solid-liquid mixing flow is
disclosed in Fig. 15 as the horizontal axis represents the mean mixture
velocity. The results of the simulation are revealed as the red line in the
chart above (Figure 5) while the two-layer model and experimental data
(Matousek, 2002) are revealed as blue line and black line with symbol
respectively in the chart. Obviously, there is a reasonable agreement
between results of the simulation, the experimental data and the two-
layer model. The mean mixture velocity is dropping from 8 m/s from
very beginning, with the decrease of which, the pressure gradient sees a
downward trend until it reaches 3.6 m/s, there is a hydraulic gradient
valley-point where the flowing particles are approaching the limit
deposit velocity and some of them drop to the pipe bottom,
consequently, the velocities below the limit deposit velocity cause
formation of the moving bed, leading to an increase in hydraulic
gradient because of the increase in hydrostatic head and particle–
particle, particle–wall, and particle–liquid interactions (Sumer, M, P
and Serife, S, H 2008).
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Fig. 16 Frictional head loss in horizontal flow with mixed-sand mixture
Cvd= 0.26 (coarse sand (1.85-mm) Cvd = 0.13 + fine sand (0.27 mm)
Cvd = 0.13)
When adding the fine particles to the mixing flow, the fine sand will be
mixed with the coarse sand cluster, the dispersion ability of the fine
particles are better so the solids distribution is more uniform than that
in the flow with coarse sand only, which means the solids effect is
dropping, another reason for that is the buoyance effect on coarse
particles occupying the contact bed (Matousek, 2002).
Fig. 17 Frictional head loss in horizontal flow with mixed-sand mixture
Cvd= 0.34 (coarse sand (1.85-mm) Cvd = 0.13 + fine sand (0.27 mm)
Cvd = 0.21)
The lines in the chart above (Fig. 17), also, sees a same trend as that in
Fig. 16, the simulation results are fitting well with the experimental
data and the two-layer model. When further adding additional fine sand
in the flow (Cvd=0.21), the corresponding solids effect is getting down
again, the figures for the hydraulic gradient of the mixing flow of
experimental data are smaller than that in the Fig. 16 under the
velocities of 6 m/s.
There is another impact of the solids effect on the mixing flow that the
corresponding velocity of the valley-point of the hydraulic gradient is
getting smaller when the additional fine sand are added, we can see the
velocity is about 3.6 m/s at Fig. 15 (coarse sand Cvd = 0.13 only), and it
becomes about 2.5 m/s at Fig. 16 (coarse sand Cvd = 0.13 + fine sand
Cvd = 0.13), then it drop to around 2 m/s in Fig. 17 (coarse sand Cvd =
0.13 + fine sand Cvd = 0.21).
CONCLUSIONS
The solid-liquid flow in horizontal pipe had been modelled with
various velocities and solid concentrations. The computational model
was developed to evaluate the solid-liquid two phase flow through
Euler-Langrage approach with standard SST k-ω viscous modelling
scheme and Mixture modeling scheme. The conclusions can be drawn
based on comparison between the simulation results and experimental
data.
(a) There is a good agreement between simulation results of CFD-DEM
model and experimental data by Matousek (2002).
(b) It has been observed that the mixing of the fine sand will weaken
the solids effect of the coarse sand, the more fine sand is mixed, the
weaker the solids effect is. The ability of dispersion of the coarse sand
is always weaker than the coarse-fine sand mixture.
(c) The hydraulic gradient of the two-phase flow decreases with the
drop of the velocity until the appearance of the valley-point, where the
moving bed is about to be formed and the flow pattern is converted
from fully suspension flow to two-layer flow.
(d) The corresponding velocity of the hydraulic gradient valley-point of
the coarse-sand pipe will decreases with the adding of the fine sand,
which means the velocity of the flow pattern conversion drop with such
variation as well, and more fine sand is added, the stronger the effect is.
ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS
This work was supported by the National Natural Science Foundation
of China (51874323, 5154007), National Science and Technology
Major Project of China (2016ZX05066005-001), Shanxi CBM
Exploration and Development Branch of PetroChina (“Material flow
tracking simulation experiment of gathering pipeline network”, “Multi-
phase flow hydraulic and thermal simulation experiment”), Southwest
Branch of China Petroleum Engineering Construction Co., Ltd. (“Loop
flow scouring simulation experiment, Flow state analysis of sand-
containing gas flushing”), all of which are gratefully acknowledged.
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