A characteristic analysis of one-dimensional two-fluid model with interfacial area transport equation

An interfacial area transport equation (iate),proposed to dynamically describe the interfacial structure evolution of two-phase flows,could help improve the predictive capability of the two-fluid model. the present study aims to investigate the well-posedness issue of a one-dimensional two-fluid model with the iate (named two-fluid-iate model hereafter) using a characteristic analysis. the momentum flux parameters,which take into account the coupling of the volumetric fraction of phase and velocity distributions over the cross-section of a flow passage,are employed. a necessary condition for the system to achieve hyperbolicity under an adiabatic flow condition is identified. a case study is performed for an adiabatic liquid-liquid slug flow,which shows that the hyperbolicity of the two-fluid-iate model is guaranteed if appropriate correlations of the momentum flux parameters are applied in the two-fluid-iate model. copyright 2010 xia wang and xiaodong sun.