Numerical Investigations of Double-Species Slurry Flow in a Straight Pipe Entrance

Abstract

Because of the complexity of multiphase slurry flow, most experiments and simulations described in the open literature are focused on single-species solid-liquid flow. In this paper, a Eulerian granular multiphase (EGM) model is introduced to make the numerical investigations in the entrance region of a straight pipe for a double-species slurry flow. In order for the study to obtain the numerical solution in fully developed turbulent flow, the k–ε turbulent model was used with the Eulerian granular multiphase model. An O-type structured grid was chosen to discretize the entire computation domain, and a control volume finite difference method (CVFDM) was applied in the governing equations. Some simulation results are compared with the authors’ experimental data to validate the numerical investigation. These numerical results for the pressure gradients are found to be in good agreement with the experimental data. It is very difficult to obtain some important flow characteristics in the double-species slurry flow by experiments; therefore, the volume fractions (or concentrations) of solids, the average velocity distributions, and the turbulent kinetic energy and dissipation rates of water in the pipe entrance will be displayed and analyzed in the numerical investigations, which have seldom been reported in the open literature.