Slugging in multiphase flow as a mixed initial-boundary value problem for a hyperbolic system

Overview & Synopsis

This paper studies the multiphasis slugging flow phenomenon occurring in oil wells and flow lines. The main contribution is a low-dimensional distributed parameters model, comprising as states the gas mass fraction, the pressure, and gas velocity. Along with appropriate boundary conditions, on the one-dimensional space domain, it constitutes a well-posed mixed initial-boundary value problem for a quasilinear hyperbolic system. Numerical simulation results obtained with a presented characteristics method solver stress the validity of the approach and the fair representativeness of the model. In particular, the period of simulated oscillations and their overall shape is in accordance with reference results from the literature. Controllability and observability open problems are exposed for future works.