Falling film thickness measurement using CFD analysis over horizontal tubesy

The objective of this study is to calculate film thickness of falling film thickness over circular horizontal tubes considering axial effect of flow along the tube using commercial computational fluid dynamics software. Commonly used six fluids are selected for this study, with modified Galileo number Gain the range of 36 to 553. Efforts are made to study variation in geometrical parameters i.e. tube diameter and spacing between the tubes. Commercial CFD code (FLUENT version 13.0.0) is used for simulation over two horizontal tubes considering 3D configurations. Model of coupled volume-of-fluid is used for tracking the motion of liquid falling film and air liquid interface. Results obtained are discussed in terms of effect of modified Galileo number Gaon average film thickness. It is observed that the nature of film thickness over the tubes is similar to available experimental and numerical data. An attempt is made to propose correlation based on numerical study for film thickness in terms of new composite non-dimensional numbers, tube angle and flow rate. © 2014 Begell House, Inc.