| The separation of shear-driven liquid film occurs in many engineering applications such as port fuel injected engines, demisters, and gas transfer lines. Despite the importance of this problem, the details of the interaction between operating parameters such liquid flow rate, gas velocities and liquid film properties on the forces at the expanding corners are still not clear. To enhance the insight on the complicated interaction between the gas and liquid phases, the shear-driven liquid flow around a corner has been studied both experimentally and analytically in this work. The effect of the complex liquid film structure on liquid mass separation is significant. For some operating conditions the liquid film can be modeled as a smooth layer, which drives the liquid mass separation due to its inertia. However, for some other gas-liquid flow conditions, the formation of large amplitude waves at the interface also contributes to liquid mass separation at the corner. The focus of this study was to enhance the understanding of the effect of both mean film inertia and large amplitude waves on the mass separation mechanism. To develop a physical understanding of the effect of liquid film properties on both mean film inertia and large amplitude wave formation and growth, experimental studies on liquids with different viscosities and surface tensions have been performed in this work. It is shown that the interaction between the gas and liquid phase transfer controls the inertial force of the liquid film as well as wave propagation. Two distinct correlations based on this physical insight have been proposed for liquid mass separation based on the dividing the shear-driven flow regimes into flow regimes without large amplitude waves and flow regimes with large amplitude waves. |
