LaunderSharmaKE in multiphase flow
 

Dear All,

I would appreciate much if you could lend me some assistance on the following problem. I am simulating a Couette flow of a stratified Gas/Liquid flow with fixed flow rates, predicting pressure drop and height.

I use a modified version of interFoam and I set up my mesh so that a problem is essentially a 1D problem.

I have had some success with laminar flows already and now I am trying turbulent regimes. I chose LaunderSharmaKE(LMKE) model but I have encountered some difficulties.

I get unreasonably high values of k at the interface which after a while propagate and botch my solution.

I was looking for the source of this behaviour. My guess is that the high density difference at the interface might be the cause. The version of LMKE I am using is incompressible. Is this significant? Is it possible to force interFoam to choose compressible version? Is it sensible at all to use a turb. model developed for single phase to simulate two phase flows?

I will welcome any comments.