Accurate prediction of annular pressure distribution is considered fundamental for the design of oil-casing annular gas-lift systems. Slug flow is recognized as the most common flow regime in gas-liquid two-phase flow within wellbores. In high gas-liquid ratio annular multiphase flow, experimental studies remain limited, and the accuracy of pressure drop predictions is insufficient. Water and air were employed as experimental fluids, and two annular configurations with dimensions of 38.5 mm×62 mm and 38.5 mm×76 mm were selected for experiments conducted in an 11.5 m long experimental pipeline. The experimental results indicate that the flow characteristics of slug flow in the annulus differ significantly from those observed in circular pipes. In annular slug flow, Taylor bubbles are no longer symmetrically distributed, and a liquid flow channel is formed between the Taylor bubbles and the inner pipe wall. Based on the slug flow characteristics obtained from experiments and numerical simulations, and by integrating existing theories for circular pipes and annular gas-liquid flow, a pressure drop model for slug flow is established, taking into account the effects of annular geometry and inclination variations. Validation against experimental data shows that the proposed slug flow pressure drop model predicts the pressure drop with an average error of approximately 15%, which satisfies the requirements for engineering applications.
WU Zheng-hua, WANG Wei, MA Bin, FAN Gao-fei, YANG Hui, QIAN Xiao, WU Hui-xiong.
Flow Characteristics and Pressure Drop Model of Gas-liquid Two-phase Slug Flow in Inclined Annulus Pipe[J].
Science Technology and Engineering, 2026, 26(15): 6380-6390 DOI:10.12404/j.issn.1671-1815.2505520
选择湍流强度和水力直径作为湍流条件的初始值;本文中几何模型的网格质量较高,符合二阶迎风格式的要求,采用二阶迎风格式作为离散格式;采用PISO(pressure-implicit with splitting of operators)算法[24]来离散压力提高计算精度;设定所有参数的收敛残差值为10-4;设定模拟的时间步长为0.000 1 s,每个时间步长的最大迭代次数为20次,模拟的流动时间为10 s。
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