A Numerical Model for Gaseous Cavitation Flow in Liquid Transmission Lines

Abstract

This work presents a numerical model for predicting the isothermal transient two-phase flow of liquid-gas homogeneous mixtures in rigid pipelines. The resulting mathematical problem is governed by a system of non-linear hyperbolic partial differential equations which is solved by means of an operator splitting technique, combined with the Glimm’s method. To implement Glimm’s method, it is presented the closed-form analytical solution of the associated Riemann problem. Uniqueness of this solution is demonstrated for a general set of equations of state for the liquid and the gas. Preliminary numerical results are presented in order to illustrated the model performance.