Global existence of weak solutions for a viscous two-phase model

The purpose of this paper is to explore a viscous two-phase liquid-gas model relevant for well and pipe flow. Our approach relies on applying suitable modifications of techniques previously used for studying the single-phase isothermal Navier-Stokes equations. A main issue is the introduction of a novel two-phase variant of the potential energy function needed for obtaining fundamental a priori estimates. We derive an existence result for weak solutions in a setting where transition to single-phase flow is guaranteed not to occur when the initial state is a true mixture of both phases. Some numerical examples are also included in order to demonstrate characteristic behavior of solutions. In particular, we illustrate how two-phase flow is genuinely different compared to single-phase flow concerning the behavior of an initial mass discontinuity. (C) 2007 Elsevier Inc. All rights reserved.