Centrifugal scaling of isothermal gas-liquid flows in horizontal tubes

To test the similarity criteria of two-phase gas-liquid flows, arising from the governing equations and boundary conditions, the flow of air and a water-glycerine mixture in a 50 mm diameter horizontal tube is compared with a two-phase flow of helium and water in a 5 mm diameter tube rotating around a parallel vertical axis (the effective gravity is 113 g0). Results emphasize that in general only dimensionless correlations provide meaningful predictions. The homogeneous Dukler case 1 (1964b) correlation, which contains no two-phase information, provides the best fit (the standard deviation is 21%) with the measured pressure drops. For predicting flow pattern the most promising approach is that of Taitel and Dukler (1976). Examples of scaling down large diameter, high pressure pipelines are presented. With a scale factor of 1/30 equality of the Froude number, the gas-liquid density ratio, and either the Reynolds number or the Weber number can be realized. Compressibility and gas viscosity are not properly scaled.