Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

www.elsevier.com/locate/etfs

Two-phase ow in microchannels
Akimi Serizawa *, Ziping Feng, Zensaku Kawara
Department of Nuclear Engineering, Kyoto University, Yoshida, Sakyo, Kyoto 606-8501, Japan
Accepted 9 November 2001

Abstract
Gasliquid two-phase ow patterns are visualized with a microscope for airwater ow in circular tubes of 20, 25 and 100 lm i.d.
and for steamwater ow in a 50 lm i.d. circular tube. The supercial velocities cover a broad range of JL 0:00317.52 m/s and
JG 0:0012295.3 m/s for airwater ows. Several distinctive ow patterns, namely, dispersed bubbly ow, gas slug ow, liquid ring
ow, liquid lump ow, annular ow, frothy or wispy annular ow, rivulet ow, liquid droplets ow and a special type of ow pattern
are identied both in airwater and steamwater systems, and their special features are described. It has been conrmed that twophase ow patterns are sensitive to the surface conditions of the inner wall of the test tube. It has been evidenced that a stable
annular ow and gas slug formation with partially stable thin liquid lm formed between the tube wall and gas slugs appeared at
high velocities under carefully treated clean surface conditions. At lower velocities, dry and wet areas exist between gas slug and the
tube wall. The cross-sectional average void fraction was also calculated from photographs, showing a good agreement with the
Armand correlation for airwater ow in lager tubes.
Published by Elsevier Science Inc.
Keywords: Ultrasmall tube; Two-phase ow; Flow pattern; Visualization

1. Introduction
Two-phase ow in microchannels has recently attracted peoples concerns because of its wide applicability to modern and advanced science and technologies
such as micro-electro-mechanical systems, electronic
cooling, chemical process engineering, medical and genetic engineering, bioengineering and etc. For instance,
The Research Committee on Heat Transfer and Fluid
Flow in Microchannel organized by the JSME recently
published a collection of papers in this area (Serizawa
[1]). The knowledge of ow and heat transfer in microscale ow passages of the size less than 100 micron
is thus strongly demanded. Specically fundamental
knowledge of two-phase ow and its mechanisms in
small (of sub-mm order) or ultrasmall (of 1 lm order)
ow passage, such as ow pattern, void fraction, pressure drop, liquid lm thickness etc. are crucial for engineering design purposes as well as for evaluation of
practical performance. Recent papers by Ghiaasiaan

Corresponding author. Tel./fax: +81-75-753-5829.

E-mail address: serizawa@nucleng.kyoto-u.ac.jp (A. Serizawa).

0894-1777/02/$ - see front matter Published by Elsevier Science Inc.

PII: S 0 8 9 4 - 1 7 7 7 ( 0 2 ) 0 0 1 7 5 - 9

and Abedel-Khalik [2] and Serizawa and Feng [3] extensively reviewed the literatures on two-phase ow and
heat transfer in microchannels. The related topics are
also included in conference proceedings (for example,
International Conference on Heat Transfer and Transport Phenomena in Microscale, 2000). However our
current knowledge is still quite limited and in reality
only a small number of literatures are available so far
which deal with two-phase ow and heat transfer in such
very small tubes (see Table 1, which lists some of the
previous studies on two-phase ow characteristics in
microchannels).
One of our questions is whether or not two-phase
ow patterns in microchannels are dierent from those
encountered in ordinarily sized tubes. In ordinarily sized
large tubes as well as in a few mm order microtubes,
two-phase ow patterns are dominated in general by
gravity with less surface tension eects. On the other
hand, in microchannels of the order of a few lm  to a
few tens lm, two-phase ow is believed to be inuenced
mainly by surface tension, viscosity and inertia forces.
However, no one knows yet in detail what two-phase
ow patterns are realized in such small tubes. The criterion for microchannel have been proposed by several

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A. Serizawa et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

Nomenclature
D
Eo
g
j
P
Q
R
a
b

hydraulic diameter
Etovos number
acceleration due to gravity
supercial velocity
pressure
power input to preheater
bubble radius
cross-sectional average void fraction
gas volumetric ow ratio

Laplace constant
density
density dierence ( qL  qG )
surface tension

k
q
Dq
r

Subscripts

G
L

gas phase
liquid phase

Table 1
Some examples of previous works with microchannels
Investigator

Hydraulic diameter
D (mm)

Conned no.
k=D

Orientation

Fluid

Test
mode

Marchessault and Mason [17]

Taylor [18]
Suo and Grith [4]

13
1.53
12

0.912.5
0.751.51
1.32.7

I
H
H

A
A
A

Lazarek and Black [19]

Barnea et al. [20]
Biwsas and Greeneld [21]
Fukano et al. [22]
Kariyasaki et al. [11]
Lin et al. [23]
Wambsganss et al. [24]
Barajas and Panton [10]
Ide et al. [25]
Fukano and Kariyasaki [13]
Bao et al. [26]

3.1
4
0.57.1
14.9
1, 2.4, 4.9
0.66, 1.17
2.92
1.6
0.56
1, 2.4, 4.9
0.73

0.33
0.68

V
V
V (D)
H
H
H
H
H
V
V(U&D),H
H, V

Tran et al. [27]

Kew [28]
Mudwar and Bowers [29]
Wattelet [30]
Umekawa et al. [31]
Inoue et al. [32]
Kariyasaki et al. [33,34]
Mishima and Hibiki [14]
Kew and Cornwell [35]
Kureta et al. [36]
Triplett et al. [15]
Lin et al. [37]
Kuwahara et al. [38]
Feng and Serizawa [39]
Feng and Serizawa [40]

2.46
1.43.7
0.42.5
2.92
3, 4
0:209  0:212
1, 2.4, 4.9
14
1.43.7
26
1.091.49
0.54
1.2
0.025
0.05

Air/water, air/aqueous glycerol

Air/glycerine
Air/water, Heptane/He,
Heptane/N2
Vapor/R113
Air/water
Air/water
Air/water
Air/water
Vapor/R12
Vapor/R113
Air/water
Air/water
Air/water
Air/water, air/glycerine
Air/kerosene
Vapor/R12, vapor/R134a
Steam/water, vapor/R141b
Steam/water
Vapor/R113
Steam/water
N2/water (glycerine sol.)
Air/water
Air/water
R141b
Steam/water
Air/water
Air/water
HFC134a
Air/water
Stream/water

0.35
1.7

0.913.9
0.44
0.681.8
1.06.3
0.35
0.63, 0.84

0.682.7
0.340.89

H
H
V
H
V
H
V(U&D)
V
H
V
H
V
H
H
H

D
A
A
A
A
D
D
A
A
A
A
D
D
D
D
D
A
A
A
D
D
A
A
D
A
D

(A: adiabatic, D: diabatic, H: horizontal, V: vertical, U: upward ow, D: downward ow).

authors in dierent ways, but roughly given by the

Laplace constant k or the Etovos number Eo, where
r
r
k
1
gqL  qG

Confined number

Eo

gDqD
r

Suo and Grith [4] derived the following criterion for

tube diameter D,

Here, the Laplace constant k calculates 2.7 mm for air

water ow at 0.1 Mpa. Another criterion was proposed
by Brauner and Moalem-Maron [5] as given below.
2

k=D P 3:3

4
Eo 6 2p
However, two-phase ow patterns in a microchannel
are not so simple to be identied by these equations.
Moreover, the eects of surface roughness and wettability (contamination) are our concerns.

A. Serizawa et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

With these backgrounds held in mind, we studied

experimentally by visualization the two-phase ow
patterns in airwater two-phase ows in round tubes
mainly of 20, 25 and 100 lm i.d. and in steamwater
two-phase ow in a 50 lm round tube. The purpose of
the present study is therefore to provide database on
two-phase ow patterns and some characteristic features
of the ow structures in microchannels of the order of a
few tens lm to 100 lm. In this report, typical features of
two-phase ows observed in ultrasmall channels are
described.

2. Experimental apparatus
Schematic diagrams of the test facility for airwater
and steamwater experiments are shown in Figs. 1 and
2, respectively. The test section for airwater experiments consists of a transparent silica or quartz capillary
tube with circular cross-section and positioned horizontally. The tube inner diameters we tested are 10, 20,
25, 30, 50 and 100 lm. The whole length of the tube
ranges from 10 to 14 mm in which 810 mm is visible,
depending on the dierent designs of the mixing zone
leading to the test section. This paper deals with the
results obtained only with the test section of 20, 25 and
100 lm in inner diameter.
A high-pressure gas bottle that also provides the
pressure head for the water tank supplies the air. As
water is driven with high-pressure air, no pump is used in
the present experiment to avoid pulsation by a pump and
also to avoid contamination by a pump. Prior to experimental runs the test section was cleaned either by
drawing ethanol through the test section or by being
treated with the combination of mechanical cleaning
with a soft brush and ultrasonic vibration in a pool of
high purity distilled water, ethanol and dilute hydrochloride acid. The two-phase ow was realized through

705

a mixer with dierent designs as typically shown in Figs.

1 and 3. The air is injected into the mixer co-axially while
water is introduced peripherally. The inlet pressure of
the test section is varied to attain desired ow conditions
and was measured with a precise pressure gauge connected to the mixer, while the outlet pressure is roughly
equal to atmospheric pressure. In order to measure the
two-phase ow rates, a precise injection syringes is installed at the outlet of the test section through an injector
head. This syringe can collect the two-phase ow coming
from the test section and accurately reads out the volumetric ow rates of both air and water phases. Because
the volumetric ow rate is extremely small in the cases
such as dispersed bubbly ow, more than 24 hours are
waited to get enough uid volume.
The visualization of the ow pattern was realized
through a precise microscope (NIKON, SMZ-U type),
which can magnify the image up to 150 times as that of
the original size. A high-speed camera system (FASTCAM-Rabbit, CANON) with recording speed of 30600
frames per second and shutting speed of 1/30 to 1/10 000
s was mounted together with microscope. The light beam
used for the visualization is provided through an adjustable light source under the test section. Two-phase
ow patterns were visualized mainly at the 70009000
lm downstream part from the inlet of the test section.
The steamwater test loop shown in Fig. 2 includes a
pre-heater and the test section. The pure water is employed as working uid and is pumped by high-pressure
air. The pre-heater is a 370 lm i.d. stainless steel tube
with outer diameter of 630 lm. The heating power is
provided by an adjustable DC power source. The test
section is a 50 lm fused silicon capillary tube with
360 lm o.d. and 10 000 lm length. A precise injection
syringe was connected to the outlet of the test section to
collect liquid so as to measure the time averaged volume
ow rate. The visualization is realized through a SMZ-U
type (NIKON) microscope together with a high-speed

Fig. 1. A schematic diagram of the experimental facility for airwater ows.

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A. Serizawa et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

Fig. 2. A schematic of steamwater experiment in a 50 lm circular tube.

Fig. 3. Mixing chamber (Type III).

video camera. A shutter speed of 1/10 000s and a recording frame rate of 600 fps were employed during the
whole test runs. The mean liquid velocity is maintained

at around 24.7 mm/s and the inlet pressure is 2.4 bar

through the whole test. The visualization is conducted at
60008000 lm positions from the inlet of the test section.

A. Serizawa et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

3. Visual observation of two-phase ow patterns

Visual observations of two-phase ow patterns were
carried out mainly with Type I (20 and 25 lm i.d.) and
Type III test sections (100 lm) as shown in Fig. 3, which
are cleaned with ethanol alone, unless otherwise stated.
The inlet pressure was varied at around 2.4 bars to
control ow conditions, whereas the exit pressure was
nearly atmospheric. The ow conditions we tested cover
JL ranging from 0.003217.5 m/s, and JG ranging from
0.0022295.3 m/s. Two-phase ows in microchannels are
rather unstable in general and the ow pattern tends to
change with time from one to another even at a given
set of time-averaged values of JG and JL . This unstable
ow character may depend on the volume of the mixing
zone [6].
3.1. Airwater two-phase ow in a 25 lm silica tube
Fig. 4 shows typical two-phase ow patterns observed
in an airwater ow in a 25 lm silica tube at nearly
atmospheric pressure with Type I test section. For twophase ow identication, we did not correct for refraction of light in image construction. The bright bands

707

along the centerline of the tube in Fig. 4 are due to

refraction in the silica tube.
3.1.1. Dispersed bubbly ow
Dispersed bubbles are observed when the gas ow
rate is very small such as JG 0:0083 m/s in case of air
water ow as well as steamwater ow. Two kinds of
bubbles are observed. The one is nely dispersed bubbles with size smaller than the tube diameter. Another
kind of bubble has a size of near to or a little larger than
the tube diameter with spherical cap and tail, but the
distance between two consecutive bubbles is much long
in many cases but not always, for example, longer than
ten times of the tube diameter. This ow pattern is
also considered as a dispersed bubbly ow. It is very
often in airwater ow that two kinds of bubbles appear together as pairs of bubbles in which the smallsized bubbles follow the larger ones. The motion of
small bubbles is likely to be strongly inuenced by the
larger bubble. The dispersed bubbles observed in the
present experiments are always maintaining a spherical
shape, except those of the size equals to or a little larger
than the tube diameter. This is mainly due to the high
interfacial pressure dierence and the strong rigidity of

Fig. 4. Twophase ow patterns (Type I).

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A. Serizawa et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

microsized bubble, which can be estimated by the wellknown LaplaceYoung equation

2r
5
R
Applying this equation to a 5 lm bubble we can nd
that the pressure dierence at bubble interface reaches
almost to 0.3 bar. This pressure dierence is sucient
to maintain a bubble with high spherical shape and to
prevent the bubble shape from being distorted. Thus,
the coalescence between two moving bubbles is hardly to
be observed in such a small tube.

PG  PL

3.1.2. Slug ow
The rigidity of bubble is high in ultrasmall tubes, and
bubbles always keep spherical shape so that the coalescence loses its base. This induces a totally dierent
mechanism from that in ordinary size tubes for the
dispersed bubbly ow transiting into the slug ow.
From the experimental observation it is quite clear that
the occurrence of the slug ow is rather an entrance
phenomenon than inducing from the tube inside. Slug
ow occurs only if the gas volume ow rate is higher at
the tube entrance and the speed of long gas bubble is not
high enough to overcome the strong surface tension
force of the liquid bridge between them.
The pressure drop induced by slug ow is very high.
This implies that the sliding between gas slug and the
tube wall is suppressed and therefore a dry zone may
have been developed underneath the gas slug due to a
strong inuence of surface tension. The surface tension
force keeps liquid phase to a slug structure and prevents
it from being dispersed as lm. On the other hand, the
ultrasmall size of the gas slug will result in a high
pressure on the gasliquid interface. This pressure difference pushes the gas slug to occupy the whole space of
the tube cross-section, and it is thus dicult for the
liquid lm to exist underneath the gas slug. Because
of the same reason, slug coalescence is also seldom
observed in the present experiment. This issue will be
discussed later.
3.1.3. Liquid ring ow
Fig. 4(c) is the typical liquid ring ow structure where
the liquid lm on the wall is symmetrically distributed.
From the experimental observation it is evident that the
liquid ring ow transited from the slug ow when the
gas velocity is high. Under low gas velocity conditions,
the liquid ring rstly appears in the middle of a long gas
slug. It seems that this liquid ring originates from a
liquid bridge separating two consecutive gas slugs.
When the gas velocity is high, many symmetrical liquid
rings will appear on the tube wall with almost equal
distance. The liquid ring ow can develop from slug ow
pattern when the gas ow rate increases to such an extent that the liquid slug is too short to support a stable

liquid bridge between two consecutive gas slugs. In other

words, when the gas ow rate is suciently high, the
length of the gas slug is increased while that of the liquid
slug is decreased. At a certain gas ow rate, the following gas slug will penetrate a liquid slug and therefore
a liquid ring is constructed. The liquid ring ow has
never been observed in conventional tubes under normal
gravity conditions, however, is quite often with the
present tube size. It is interesting to note that Rezkallah
[7] observed under microgravity conditions frothy slugannular which is similar to the present liquid ring ow
but it contains small liquid droplets in the gas phase.
Triplett et al. [8] reported their observation of churn
ow and slugannular ow patterns in the 1.09 mmhydraulic diameter semi-triangular test section with air
water, which clearly showed liquid ring type interface
deformation with a few bubbles in the liquid lm. In the
present experiment, we did not identify any small liquid
droplets in the gas core, nor small bubbles in the liquid
lm.
Because of its peculiar shape, the force balance between the viscosity force from the wall and the drag
force from the gas core determines the motion of the
liquid ring. When the former is dominant, the liquid ring
will stick on the wall and grow up. This growth is supposed to be a result of liquid supply from liquid lm
in both upstream and downstream regions. When the
height of the liquid ring approaches to a certain value,
the drag force from the gas core becomes dominant and
the liquid ring moves to the downstream.
3.1.4. Liquid lump ow
If we further increase the gas ow rate in liquid ring
ow, a liquid lump ow, of which the high-speed core
gas entrains the liquid phase and liquid lumps are sliding
on the wall, will be developed, as shown in Fig. 4(d). The
shape of liquid lump is very similar to that of the wavy
ow in a horizontal large tube. The liquid lump is
shifting from side to side. When a liquid lump contacts
the tube wall, the strong surface tension force will prevent it from spreading into the liquid lm.
3.2. Steamwater ow in a 50 lm silica tube
In steamwater experiment, we used a 10 mm long 50
lm i.d. silica capillary tube for the test section connected
to a stainless steel tube that is heated by dc current.
Pressuring the water reservoir circulates the pure water
into the test section. The measurements were conducted
at a low liquid velocity JL of 2.47 cm/s by changing heat
input to the pre-heater. Fig. 5 shows a typical example
of two-phase ow pattern observation carried out in
steamwater two-phase ow in a 50 lm silica tube.
General trends observed are quite similar to those in air
water ow in a 25 lm tube. An exception was an observation of liquid droplets ow. However, this is not an

A. Serizawa et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

709

Fig. 5. Two-phase ow patterns in steamwater ow.

essential dierence between the two cases, since the

reason we did not observe the liquid droplet ow in air
water ow is merely a problem of experimental conditions we tested.

3.3. Airwater two-phase ow in a 100 lm quartz tube

As demonstrated in Fig. 6, the result indicates that
two-phase ow patterns observed in a 100 lm quartz

Fig. 6. Two-phase ow patterns in a 100 lm quartz tube.

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A. Serizawa et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

Fig. 7. Liquid droplets sticking onto the tube wall in a gas slug.

tube (Type III) are almost similar to those observed in a

25 lm silica capillary tube with several exceptions. One
of such exceptions is that in slug ow encountered at low
velocities, small liquid droplets in a gas slug are sticking
on the tube wall (Fig. 7). This fact is evidence that no
liquid lm exists between the gas slug and the tube wall.
This particular phenomenon was reported earlier by
Geng et al. [9] in slug bubble oscillation experiment in a
1-mm diameter vertical tube for pure waterair. Secondly, we observed rather stable liquid ring ow with
thin liquid lm distributed uniformly at the tube wall.
The growth of a liquid ring is supported by liquid supply
from surrounding liquid lm. Thirdly, in liquid lump
ow, the liquid lumps are running in rather partially
continuous lms than in separate discrete liquid lumps
just like rivulets. At smaller liquid ow rates, partially
continuous liquid lm ow changes to the rivulets or
even to large liquid droplets or discrete liquid lumps.
The formation of multi-rivulets is reported to depend on
the contamination of the tube surface [10]. At higher gas
velocity, the liquid droplet ow was clearly identied.
One of our questions is whether the inner wall of the
test tube is wet or dry during the passage of a gas slug in

slug ow pattern. We checked this problem using a highspeed video and a high precision laser confocal displacement meter with accuracy of 0.4 lm in thickness.
Fig. 8 shows a moving boundary between wet and dry
areas on the tube wall during a passage of gas slugs. A

Fig. 8. Wetdry boundary at the tube wall.

Fig. 9. Two-phase ow pattern transition.

A. Serizawa et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

711

detailed inspection of the signals from the laser confocal

displacement meter suggests the existence of dry area
underneath a gas slug as well. Kariyasaki et al. [11]
measured the lm thickness surrounding the large gas
slugs in the tube diameter range 14.9 mm in airwater.
They observed the existence of the liquid lm between
the gas slug and the tube wall. Their results indicate that
the lm thickness decreases along the gas slug length.
The dierence between the present observation and
Kariyasakis observation may be attributed to the scale
eects and surface wettability.

4. Flow pattern transition map

Fig. 9 shows a ow pattern map obtained for air
water two-phase ow in a 20 lm i.d. silica tube (Type I)
at nearly atmospheric pressure. It is interesting to note
in this gure that, if we ignore the dierence between
liquid ring ow and liquid lump ow both of which are
separated ows, the ow pattern transitions generally
follow the lines predicted by the correlation of Mandhane et al. [12], although stratied ow and wavy ow are
not the case in the present study with negligible eect of
gravity. This result does not agree with the observation
made by Fukano and Kariyasaki [13] for airwater in
tubes of 1, 2.4 and 4.9 mm i.d.

slugs, and thus the void fraction presented here concerns

only with bubbly ow and slug ow. Liquid ring ow is
axi-symmetrical, but not included in this gure. Results
are demonstrated in Fig. 10. Although the present data
scatter to some extent in nature, the present data are
correlated with the Armand Correlation (Armand and
Treschev [16]) for airwater ow. This trend does not
contradict to the data of Kariyasaki et al. [11] mentioned above.

5. Void fraction

6. Eect of surface wettability

Void fractions in microchannels have been measured

by Kariyasaki et al. [11], Mishima and Hibiki [14] and
Triplett et al. [15] for airwater. Mishima and Hibiki
correlated their data as well as the data of Kariyasaki
et al. and proposed a drift ux type correlation for
bubbly and slug ows. Kariyasaki et al. used a constant
current method to measure void fraction in tubes of 1,
2.4 and 4.9 mm i.d. They proposed the following correlations depending on the ow conditions in terms of
the gas volumetric ratio b.

Two-phase ows in microchannels are more or less

aected by surface tension force, and therefore both
surface roughness and wettability between the tube wall
and the uid are supposed to aect the two-phase ow
patterns or two-phase ow structures. In fact, Barajas
and Panton [10] studied experimentally the eect of
wettability on two-phase ow patterns and their transitions. Their results indicated that the general trends of
the ow pattern transitions are not so signicantly affected by the surface contamination, that is, the wetta-

For
For
For
For

b < bA :
bB < b < 0:6intermittent flow:
bB < b; 0:6 < b < 0:95intermittent flow:
bB < b; 0:95 < bannular and intermittent flow:

Here bA and bB are experimentally determined constants

which depend on the tube diameter.
In the present work, the cross-sectional averaged void
fraction was calculated from high-speed video pictures,
by assuming symmetrical shape of bubbles and gas

Fig. 10. Cross-sectional average void fraction in airwater two-phase

ow in a 20 lm i.d. silica tube (Type I).

ab
a 0:833b
a 0:69b 0:0858
a 0:83 log1  b 0:633

bility, except for the fact that the rivulet/multi-rivulet

ows are sensitive to the wettability eect.
In the present study, in order to examine how twophase ow patterns in ultrasmall channels are sensitive
to surface contamination, we observed visually the ow

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A. Serizawa et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

patterns formation using a 100 lm i.d quartz tube test

section (Type III) carefully cleaned by ultrasonic vibration in pools of high purity distilled water, ethanol
and dilute hydrochloride acid solution. This cleaning
procedure is as follows:
(1) Mechanical cleaning with a soft brush.
(2) After treating with high purity distilled water, the
test tube was cleaned by ultrasonic vibration in
ethanol (1 h).
(3) Place the tube in high purity hydrochloride solution
(35 wt.%) for 1 h. Then, the ultrasonic vibration was
applied for 5 min.
(4) Ultrasonic vibration applied in distilled water for
10 min.
(5) The test tube was then kept in ethanol for 1 h.
(6) Finally, the test tube was blown by ltered air and
installed to the experimental apparatus for measurements.
Fig. 11, showing very interesting various aspects of
two-phase ow patterns, represents the results of our
observation. It should be noticed from these pictures
that a variety of two-phase ow patterns were encountered in a clean microchannel.
By comparing Figs. 6 and 11, we may notice that in a
very clean tube, many small individual bubbles are
owing in a discrete way in the tube without coalescence
in bubbly ow. The most interesting thing is the special
ow pattern given in Fig. 11(d) where several bubbles
with various shapes are connected in a series by the gas
stems locating at the tube centreline like skewed barbecue (Japanese Yakitori). The liquid ring ow was so
beautifully realized.
It is thus obvious that the tube wall is much easier to
become wet under such conditions, and thus stable annular ow was realized. Even more, frothy or wispy
annular ow was also observed where small bubbles
were trapped within the thin liquid lm ow on the tube
wall. This is because the water lm is spreading and the
lm swallows up small bubbles without breaking it due
to improved wettability. However, when the ow was
very low, we observed a formation of dry area between
gas slug and the tube wall similarly in contaminated
tubes. Fig. 12 shows bubbles with various shapes oating in stagnant water in the 100 lm i.d quartz tube
cleaned with ethanol blowing through the tube. The
interface of the bubble on the left side of the picture is
deformed at the upper wall surface due to the existence
of a liquid droplet there with no liquid lm surrounding
the bubble. It has been thus conrmed that the twophase ow structures in ultrasmall channel is more seriously aected by the wettability between the tube and
the uids, and thus the surface contamination is a key
parameter which dominates two-phase ow pattern
transitions.

Fig. 11. Airwater two-phase ow patterns in a 100 lm i.d. clean

quartz tube (Type III) treated with ultrasonic vibration in distilled
water, in ethanol and in dilute hydrochloride acid solution.

Fig. 12. Various shapes of bubbles oating in stagnant water in a 100

lm i.d. quartz tube cleaned only with ethanol.

7. Conclusions
Airwater and steamwater two-phase ow patterns
are visualized in a 20, 25 and 100 lm and in a 50 lm
i.d. ultrasmall tube, respectively, through a microscope.
More than several dierent ow patterns are observed,
namely, dispersed bubbly ow, gas slug ow, liquid ring

A. Serizawa et al. / Experimental Thermal and Fluid Science 26 (2002) 703714

ow, liquid lump ow, skewed barbecue (Yakitori)

shaped ow, annular ow, frothy or wispy annular ow,
rivulet ow and liquid droplets ow are identied both
in airwater and steamwater systems, and their detailed
features are described.
We also studied experimentally the eect of surface
contamination and the wettability between the tube wall
and the uids. It has been evidenced that a stable annular ow and gas slug formation with stable thin liquid
lm formed between the tube wall and gas slugs appeared at high velocities under carefully treated clean
surface conditions. However, at lower velocities, dry and
wet areas exist between gas slug and the tube wall.
Two-phase ow pattern transition map was constructed and compared with the Mandhanes correlation. Although two-phase structures in microchannels
with a few tens lm to a few 100 lm i.d are supposed to
be essentially dierent in many points from those of
two-phase ows encountered in ordinary scale tubes,
general trends in the present case follow the Mandhanes
prediction.
The cross-sectional average void fraction was also
calculated from photographs, showing a good agreement with the Armand correlation for lager tubes.
Although the present work has claried several interesting ndings about two-phase ow phenomena in microchannels, we are still at the rst stage of research in this
area. More detailed database on two-phase structures
and characteristics should be accumulated for future.

Acknowledgements
The authors acknowledge the assistance from Mr. T.
Fukami (Master Course Student at Department of
Nuclear Engineering, Kyoto University) in calculating
void fractions.

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