Unresolved CFD and DEM Coupled Solver for Particle-Laden Flow and Its Application to Single Particle Settlement

Seongjin Song,Sunho Park

doi:10.3390/jmse8120983

Abstract

In the present study, a single particle settlement was studied using a developed unresolved computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and discrete element method (DEM) coupling solver. The solver was implemented by coupling OpenFOAM, the open-source computational fluid dynamics libraries, with LIGGGHTS, the open-source discrete element method libraries. An averaging method using a kernel function was considered to decrease the grid dependency. For the drag model of a single particle, a revised volume fraction with a particle volume expansion coefficient was applied. Falling particles in a water tank were simulated and compared with the empirical correlation. A parametric study using several integrated added mass coefficients and volume expansion coefficients from low to high Reynolds numbers was carried out. The simulations which used the developed numerical methods showed significantly improved predictions of particle settlement.

Highlights

Particle-laden flows have been studied for several decades due to the wide range of related industrial applications
To understand the interaction between fluid and particle, discrete element method (DEM) has been coupled with Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) methods such as the finite volume (FVM), finite difference (FDM), lattice Boltzmann (LBM), and meshless methods [9,10,11,12]
As the particle size was close to the cell size, the fluid volume fraction was not accurate

Summary

Introduction

Particle-laden flows have been studied for several decades due to the wide range of related industrial applications. Approaches to a two-phase fluid modeling for the particle-laden flow can be categorized into the Euler-Euler approach and the Euler-Lagrangian approach [1]. The Euler-Lagrangian approach is the one most commonly applied in various engineering fields to model particle-laden flows [3,4,5]. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and discrete element method (DEM) coupling solvers that use the Euler-Lagrangian approach have been popular. Cundall and Strack [6] presented a basic concept of DEM, which simplified the collision between particles using a spring-dashpot model. The simple spring dashpot model could handle a large number of particle collisions [7,8]. The computational efficiency and convenience of CFD and DEM coupled solvers are advantageous over other coupled solvers [1]

Objectives

Methods

Results

Conclusion