This paper presents a study of pressure and velocity relaxation in
two-phase flow calculations. Several of the present observations have been
made elsewhere, and the purpose of the paper is to strengthen these
observations and draw some conclusions. It is numerically demonstrated how
a single-pressure two-fluid model is recovered when applying instantaneous
pressure relaxation to a two-pressure two-fluid model. Further,
instantaneous velocity relaxation yields a drift-flux model. It is also
shown that the pressure relaxation has the disadvantage of inducing a large
amount of numerical smearing. The comparisons have been conducted by using
nalogous numerical schemes, and a multi-stage centred (MUSTA) scheme for
non-conservative two-fluid models has been applied to and tested on the
two-pressure two-fluid model. As for others, previously tested two-phase
flow models, the MUSTA schemes have been found to be robust, accurate and
non-oscillatory. However, compared to their Roe reference schemes, they
consistently have a lower computational efficiency for problems involving
mass transport.