Abstract
The ability to control the distribution of particles in a fluid is generally regarded as a factor of great importance in a variety of fields (manufacturing processes, biomedical applications, materials engineering and various particle separation processes, to cite a few). The present study considers the hitherto not yet addressed situation in which solid spherical particles are dispersed in a non-isothermal fluid undergoing turbulent vibrationally-induced convection (chaotic thermovibrational flow in a square cavity due to vibrations perpendicular to the imposed temperature difference). Although the possibility to use laminar thermovibrational flows (in microgravity) and turbulent flows of various types (in normal gravity conditions) to induce the accumulation of solid mass dispersed in a non-isodense fluid is already known, the interplay of finite-size finite-mass particles with chaotic flow in weightlessness conditions has never been considered. In the present study this subject is tackled through direct numerical solution of the fluid and particle tracking equations in the framework of a one-way coupling approach. Results are presented for relatively wide ranges of vibrational amplitude, particle size and density.
Highlights
Many natural and industrial processes are known to depend on the delicate interplay of two or more phases
Most existing studies have focused on the preferential clustering of either isodense or non-neutrally buoyant solid particles in the case of isotropic turbulence [3,4] with the two-fold objective of describing the effect of turbulence on the dynamics of the discrete phase and elaborating strategies to modulate/attenuate turbulence [5,6,7,8]
This may be regarded as an equation accounting for all the forces acting on the generic solid particle and the related balance in a Lagrangian frame of reference
Summary
Many natural and industrial processes are known to depend on the delicate interplay of two or more phases. In the near future, dedicated experiments will be executed onboard the International Space Station to shed some additional light on these phenomena and confirm the predictions of numerical studies (an example being the T-PAOLA project-Thermovibrationally-driven Particle Self-Assembly and Ordering mechanisms in Low gravity– known as “Particle Vibration” experiment, set to be executed in 2023) Despite these efforts and a few other relevant investigations [17,18,19], the problem related to particle behavior in microgravity conditions has received less attention than the corresponding case dealing with particles in terrestrial flows.
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