A two-fluid model for gas-particle turbulent flows based on the probability density function approach

Abstract

According to experimental observations, laden particles in turbulence may attenuate or augment the carrier phase turbulence. But until now, there are no widely recognized models for estimating the so-called turbulence modulation phenomenon. In this paper, a novel two-fluid model is proposed based on the probability density function (PDF) approach. The Reynolds stress equation of the present model contains both production and dissipation terms due to the presence of particles, the turbulence modulation phenomenon can be well explained with the new model. To further explore the two-fluid model, a comparative study on PDF and Reynolds-averaged approaches is carried on, the differences and relations between the present model and the classical two-fluid Reynolds averaged Navier–Stokes (RANS) model are analyzed in the paper. Theoretical and numerical analysis indicates that the proposed model shows particular promise for predicting particle-laden turbulent flows.