Stationary states of forced two-phase turbulence

TL;DR

This paper investigates the stationary states of forced two-phase turbulence through numerical simulations, analyzing different forcing methods, flow statistics across various parameters, and the distinct turbulent behaviors of bubbles and droplets.

Contribution

It introduces three approaches to force two-phase turbulence, studies their effects on stationary states, and provides detailed analysis of turbulence characteristics across different flow regimes.

Findings

Forcing methods eliminate initialization arbitrariness.

Interface acts as a soft wall inhibiting eddy accommodation.

Bubbles and droplets show distinct turbulent behaviors.

Abstract

In this work, we perform numerical simulations of forced two-phase isotropic turbulence to study the stationary states of a two-phase mixture. We first formulate three different approaches to force a two-phase turbulent flow that maintains a constant (a) mixture kinetic energy, (b) mixture kinetic energy + surface energy, and (c) individual phase kinetic energy, and study their effect on the final stationary state of the system. We show that forcing the two-phase system eliminates the arbitrariness associated with the initialization of the second phase in two-phase turbulence simulations. Next, we study the global statistics of the two-phase mixture in the stationary state for varying density ratios ($10^{-3}$ to $10^3$) and viscosity ratios ($10^{-3}$ to $10^3$), void fraction (dilute to dense regimes), and Weber numbers (breakup and non-breakup regimes). We utilize a spatial filtering approach, that is applicable for the general case of incompressible/compressible two-phase flows, to compute the energy spectra of each of the phases and study the turbulent kinetic energy distribution across scales. We find that the interface behaves as a soft wall, inhibiting the accommodation of eddies inside the dispersed phase. Finally, we show that bubbles and drops exhibit different turbulent characteristics for the same global conditions of the carrier phase, with bubbles exhibiting higher turbulent intensities inside them and droplets behaving ballistically, similar to solid particles. This study acts as a foundational work on stationary two-phase turbulence, which can be used for further analysis and the development of subgrid-scale models for larger-scale simulations of two-phase turbulent flows.