Coupled simulation of fluid-particle interaction for large complex granules: A resolved CFD-DEM method for modelling the airflow in a vertical fixed bed of irregular sinter particles

Abstract

A resolved CFD-DEM method is proposed to simulate the fluid-particle interaction for large complex granules. The airflow in a vertical sinter fixed bed is numerically studied using this method. The multi-sphere clumped method is used to create irregular sinter particles in DEM. The immersed boundary method and dynamic cell refinement are applied to describe the fluid flow around particles with higher resolution, by which the fluid-particle interaction can be simulated more accurately. The simulation results presented the packing voidage distributions and the airflow fields in the sinter beds of different single and mixed particle size ranges. The bed pressure drops were simulated and the results were compared with the corresponding experimental ones. The good agreement indicated that the proposed resolved CFD-DEM method is an effective tool to model the fluid-particle interaction for irregular large granules in the gas-solid multi-phase systems.