Verification of a dust transport model against theoretical solutions in multidimensional advection diffusion problems

Abstract

Potentially explosive dust aerosol mobilization in the vacuum vessel is an important safety issue of the ITER facility, especially in scenarios of loss of vacuum accidents. Therefore dust mobilization modeling is ongoing in Research Center Karlsuhe. At first the aerosol particle model in the GASFLOW computer code is introduced briefly. To verify the particle model, a series of particle diffusion problems are simulated in one-, two- and three-dimensions. In each problem a particle source is initially exposed to an advective gas flow. Then a dust cloud is formed in the down stream. To obtain the theoretical solution about the particle concentration in the dust cloud, the governing diffusion partial differential equations with an additional advection term are solved by using Green's function method. Different spatial and temporal characters about the particle sources are also considered, e.g., instantaneous or continuous sources, line, or volume sources and so forth. The GASFLOW simulation results about the particle concentrations and the corresponding Green's function solutions are compared case by case. Very good agreements are found between the theoretical solutions and the GASGLOW simulations, when the drag force between the micron-sized particles and the conveying gas flow meets the Stokes’ law about resistance. This situation is corresponding to a very small Reynolds number based on the particle diameter, with a negligible inertia effect of the particles. This verification work shows that the particle model of the GASFLOW code can reproduce numerically particle transport and diffusion in a good way.