2-PHASE FLOW MODELING IN GAS-STIRRED LIQUID VESSELS WITH SUPG-STABILIZED EQUAL-ORDER INTERPOLATIONS

The modelling of liquid flow in gas-stirred vessels is described. A si mple two-phase model accounts for the buoyancy effect of bubbles. Fric tion between liquid and gas is modelled with the hypothesis of indepen dent bubbles. The resulting PDE system is discretized with an original version of the SUPG-FEM technique which stabilizes both the convectio n term and equal-order interpolations for velocity and pressure, which are known to be unstable for incompressible flows. The resulting stea dy state discrete system is solved via pseudotemporal explicit iterati on with a local time step and a preconditioning to homogenize the temp oral scales for liquid and gas.