Notes on Well-Posed, Ensemble Averaged Conservation Equations for Multiphase, Multi-Component, and Multi-Material Flows
At the INL researchers and engineers routinely encounter multiphase, multi-component, and/or multi-material flows. Some examples include: Reactor coolant flows Molten corium flows Dynamic compaction of metal powders Spray forming and thermal plasma spraying Plasma quench reactor Subsurface flows, particularly in the vadose zone Internal flows within fuel cells Black liquor atomization and combustion Wheat-chaff classification in combine harvesters Generation IV pebble bed, high temperature gas reactor The complexity of these flows dictates that they be examined in an averaged sense. Typically one would begin with known (or at least postulated) microscopic flow relations that hold on the “small” scale. These include continuum level conservation of mass, balance of species mass and momentum, conservation of energy, and a statement of the second law of thermodynamics often in the form of an entropy inequality (such as the Clausius-Duhem inequality). The averaged or macroscopic conservation equations and entropy inequalities are then obtained from the microscopic equations through suitable averaging procedures. At this stage a stronger form of the second law may also be postulated for the mixture of phases or materials. To render the evolutionary material flow balance system unique, constitutive equations and phase or material interaction relations are introduced from experimental observation, or by postulation, through strict enforcement of the constraints or restrictions resulting from the averaged entropy inequalities. These averaged equations form the governing equation system for the dynamic evolution of these mixture flows. Most commonly, the averaging technique utilized is either volume or time averaging or a combination of the two. The flow restrictions required for volume and time averaging to be valid can be severe, and violations of these restrictions are often found. A more general, less restrictive (and far less commonly used) type of averaging known as ensemble averaging can also be used to produce the governing equation systems. In fact volume and time averaging can be viewed as special cases of ensemble averaging. Ensemble averaging is beginning to gain some notice, for example the general-purpose multi-material flow simulation code CFDLib under continuing developed at the Los Alamos National Laboratory [Kashiwa and Rauenzahn 1994] is based on an ensemble averaged formulation. The purpose of this short note is to give an introduction to the ensemble averaging methodology and to show how ensemble averaged balance equations and entropy inequality can be obtained from the microscopic balances. It then details some seven-equation, two-pressure, two-velocity hyperbolic, well-posed models for two-phase flows. Lastly, a simple example is presented of a model in which the flow consists of two barotropic fluids with no phase change in which an equilibrium pressure equation is obtained in the spirit of pressure-based methods of computational fluid dynamics.
- Research Organization:
- Idaho National Lab. (INL), Idaho Falls, ID (United States)
- Sponsoring Organization:
- DOE - NE
- DOE Contract Number:
- DE-AC07-99ID-13727
- OSTI ID:
- 911239
- Report Number(s):
- INL/EXT-05-00516; TRN: US0704481
- Country of Publication:
- United States
- Language:
- English
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Related Subjects
ATOMIZATION
COMBUSTION
COMPUTERIZED SIMULATION
COOLANTS
CORIUM
ENFORCEMENT
ENTROPY
FLUID MECHANICS
FUEL CELLS
MIXTURES
PLASMA
SPENT LIQUORS
THERMODYNAMICS
TWO-PHASE FLOW
balances
flows
mass
multi-material
multicomponent
multiphase