Solid‐fluid coupling in a fully Lagrangian framework

Abstract

AbstractThe simulation of multiphase flows consisting of granular and fluid phases is of great interest in a wide variety of industrial applications, such as chemical process engineering, design of conveyor systems and abrasion modeling. In this context, the granular phase is often described by the discrete element method, which calculates the trajectory of each individual solid particle in a Lagrangian manner while resolving inter‐particle and geometry collisions. While the models behind individual interactions are generally not very complex, the necessary data structures and neighbor search algorithms often have a major impact on performance. Here, we present the coupling of this approach to a Lagrangian generalized finite difference method for the fluid phase which has been successfully used in a wide variety of practical applications. Coupling these two approaches enables us to treat all phases in a common framework and to use efficient and scalable data structures and algorithms. At the same time we retain the advantages of meshfree fluid solvers in free surface problems or rapidly changing flow geometries.