SPH Multiphase Simulation of Bubbly Flows: Towards Oil and Water Separation

The multi-fluid SPH formulation by Grenier et al. (2009) is studied in the context of engineering flows encountered in the offshore industry where bubbly flows are of importance in some production processes. These particular flows being dominated by viscous and surface tension effects, the considered formulation includes models of these physical effects. This model is then used to simulate viscous incompressible bubbly flows of increasing complexity. These flows include the merging of two bubbles, the separation process in a bubbly flow in a closed tank and then in a simplified separator. Results are compared to numerical solutions when available. The influence of the Bond number on these interfacial flow evolutions is investigated in detail.