Simulation of particle motion in a closed conduit validated against experimental data

Abstract

Motion of a number of spherical particles in a closed conduit is examined by means of both simulation and experiment. The bed of the conduit is covered by stationary spherical particles of the size of the moving particles. The flow is driven by experimentally measured velocity profiles which are inputs of the simulation. Altering input velocity profiles generates various trajectory patterns. The lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) based simulation is developed to study mutual interactions of the flow and the particles. The simulation enables to model both the particle motion and the fluid flow. The entropic LBM is employed to deal with the flow characterized by the high Reynolds number. The entropic modification of the LBM along with the enhanced refinement of the lattice grid yield an increase in demands on computational resources. Due to the inherently parallel nature of the LBM it can be handled by employing the Parallel Computing Toolbox (MATLAB) and other transformations enabling usage of the CUDA GPU computing technology. The trajectories of the particles determined within the LBM simulation are validated against data gained from the experiments. The compatibility of the simulation results with the outputs of experimental measurements is evaluated. The accuracy of the applied approach is assessed and stability and efficiency of the simulation is also considered.