Two-dimensional dynamics of a mobile elliptical cylinder in an upward flow

Abstract

The fully resolved dynamics of an elliptical particle suspended in an upward flow in an expanding channel, with successively increasing degrees of freedom of motion from a completely fixed state to an eventually fluidized state, are examined using particle resolved direct numerical simulation. The signed distance function immersed boundary method (sdfibm), implemented in OpenFOAM, is validated against results from COMSOL for the case of a pinned ellipse. The aspect ratio of the ellipse (defined as the ratio of the major to the minor axis (γ=Ra/Rb) is held constant at 2, while the minor axis is kept as Rb=0.15 (with respect to the inlet width, Wi = 1). A particle Reynolds number defined as Rep=(2Ra)Vmax/ν (where Vmax = 1 is the centerline velocity) is varied up to 300. The simulations exhibit rich dynamical behavior with stable, steady solutions up to Rep around 67, above which vortex shedding begins, with the ellipse responding with its oscillatory motion in response to the stresses and torques acting on it by the fluid. For the case of free translation in the x direction, multiple oscillatory states are found, where the particle is confined in the left or right half of the flow domain, depending on the initial placement of the particle. The forces on the particle get progressively complicated as the degree of freedom of movement of the ellipse increases, indicating that traditional drag correlations with fixed particles may not be valid in situations when they have mobility if one desires higher fidelity in coarse-grained models.