Evaluation of turbulence kinetic energy budget in turbulent flows by using a photobleaching molecular tagging velocimetry

Abstract

Understanding turbulence kinetic energy (TKE) budget in gas-liquid two-phase bubbly flows is indispensable to develop and improve turbulence models for the bubbly flows. Simultaneous measurement of velocity and velocity gradients with a spatial resolution smaller than the Kolmogorov scale is required to evaluate the TKE budget experimentally. We therefore proposed a molecular tagging velocimetry based on photobleaching reaction (PB-MTV) and applied it to turbulent flows in a square duct to demonstrate the possibility of evaluation of TKE budget. In this study, we improved PB-MTV in its processing speed by utilizing GPGPU(General Purpose Graphic Processing Unit) to increase sample number in measurements. We measured TKE budget in a turbulent water flow in a square duct by using the PB-MTV at the same turbulent Reynolds number as DNS data provided by Horiuchi, and compared the measured data with the DNS data to validate PB-MTV for evaluation of TKE budget. We also measured TKE budget in a bubbly flow in the square duct to examine effects of bubbles on TKE budget. As a result, we found that (1) PB-MTV can accurately evaluate TKE budget in turbulent flows, (2) bubbles affect the production and diffusion rates of TKE and do not affect the dissipation rate so much, and (3) the model proposed by Troshko and Hassan can reasonably estimate the production rate of the bubble-induced pseudo turbulence. © 2011 The Japan Society of Mechanical Engineers.