A Coupled PIV PTV Technique for the Dispersed Oil-Water Two-Phase Flows Within a Centrifugal Pump Impeller

Abstract

- The current work presents a framework for the simultaneous characterization of different phases in a dispersed oil-water two-phase flow. The framework is based on the coupling of the PIV and PTV techniques in raw PIV acquisition images. The PIV technique computes the water velocity fields, while the PTV technique calculates the oil drop velocities. Thus, the proposed technique allows the simultaneous measurement of the water phase and dispersed oil drop velocity from the same image. In order to present the advantages of the coupled PIV/PTV technique, the flow within a centrifugal pump impeller is completely analyzed by computing the oil and water phase-ensembled velocities. the phase-averaged velocity fields of the oil drops are presented. The results show that the oil drops move slower than the continuous phase on the majority of the impeller channels, except close to the oil injection ports. These results may help the oil drop dynamics within centrifugal pump impellers, the of drag/lift/virtual mass closure models, typically used in Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) applications.