Particle-laden Turbulence Research Articles

Turbulence modulation by charged inertial particles in channel flow

Large amounts of small inertial particles embedded in a turbulent flow are known to modify the turbulent statistics and structures, a phenomenon referred to as turbulence modulation. While particle electrification is ubiquitous in particle-laden turbulence and significantly alters particle behaviour, the effects of inter-particle electrostatic forces on turbulence modulation and the underlying physical mechanisms remain unclear. To fill this gap, we perform a series of point-particle direct numerical simulations of turbulent channel flows at a friction Reynolds number of approximately 540, laden with uncharged and charged bidisperse particles. The results demonstrate that, compared to flows laden with uncharged particles, the presence of inter-particle electrostatic forces leads to substantial changes in both turbulent intensities and structures. In particular, the inner-scaled mean streamwise fluid velocity is found to shift towards lower values, indicating a noticeable increase in fluid friction velocity. Turbulent intensities appear to be further suppressed through facilitating the particles to extract momentum from the fluid phase and increasing extra turbulent kinetic dissipation by particles. Importantly, the overall drag is enhanced by indirectly strengthening the contribution of particle stress, even though the contribution of the total fluid stress is decreased. On the other hand, the magnitude of the large-scale motions is weakened by simultaneously reducing turbulent production and increasing particle feedback around the scales of the large-scale motions. Meanwhile, the average streaky fluid structures in the streamwise–spanwise planes and inclined fluid structures in the streamwise–wall-normal planes become expanded and flattened, respectively.

GPU acceleration of four-way coupled PP-DNS for compressible particle-laden wall turbulence

This paper presents an efficient implementation of the four-way coupled point-particle direct numerical simulation (PP-DNS) for compressible particle-laden wall turbulence, utilizing the open-source finite-difference compressible Navier–Stokes solver, STREAmS. The proposed design integrates a GPU-based two-phase collision detection algorithm known as the spatial subdivision method, along with specialized storage and MPI communication strategies for Lagrangian particles on multi-GPU platforms. Specifically, a ‘page table’ like data structure is designed to store the particle information compactly and to enable highly parallelized packing and unpacking procedures for GPU-GPU data exchange. These advancements significantly reduce the computational cost of four-way coupled particle-laden flow simulations, enabling efficient simulations involving over O(107) particles (an order of magnitude higher than that in the state-of-the-art simulations) on a single NVIDIA A100 GPU. To validate the proposed implementation, we perform simulations of compressible particle-laden wall-bounded turbulence using canonical configurations such as channel flows and zero-pressure-gradient boundary layers. The example results highlight the effects of inter-particle collisions and flow compressibility. Furthermore, we assess single-GPU performance and scalability by employing up to eight NVIDIA GPU devices. Even for four-way coupled simulations, the elapsed time per step scales approximately linearly with the number of particles (when the number of particles is large enough), and a parallel efficiency of 94.1% is achieved on 8 NVIDIA A100 GPUs.

The Role of Particle Inertia and Thermal Inertia in Heat Transfer in a Non-Isothermal Particle-Laden Turbulent Flow

We present an analysis of the effect of particle inertia and thermal inertia on the heat transfer in a turbulent shearless flow, where an inhomogeneous passive temperature field is advected along with inertial point particles by a homogeneous isotropic velocity field. Eulerian–Lagrangian direct numerical simulations are carried out in both one- and two-way coupling regimes and analyzed through single-point statistics. The role of particle inertia and thermal inertia is discussed by introducing a new decomposition of particle second-order moments in terms of correlations involving Lagrangian acceleration and time derivative of particles. We present how particle relaxation times mediate the level of particle velocity–temperature correlation, which gives particle contribution to the overall heat transfer. For each thermal Stokes number, a critical Stokes number is individuated. The effect of particle feedback on the attenuation or enhancement of fluid temperature variance is presented. We show that particle feedback enhances fluid temperature variance for Stokes numbers less than one and damps is for larger than one Stokes number, regardless of the thermal Stokes number, even if this effect is amplified by an increasing thermal inertia.

Lattice Boltzmann simulations of homogeneous shear turbulence laden with finite-size particles

As a powerful tool to investigate turbulent flows laden with finite-size particles, the lattice Boltzmann method (LBM)'s capability to contribute to a particle-resolved simulation of particle-laden homogeneous shear turbulence (HST) has yet to be realized. To capture the turbulence-particle interactions more accurately, the interpolated-bounce-back schemes combined with the momentum-exchange method that possesses second-order accuracy are adopted to treat the no-slip condition on particle surfaces and compute the hydrodynamic force/torque. However, this choice brings extra difficulties in enforcing the shear periodic boundaries due to the absence of fluid information in solid regions. The present study resolves these difficulties by designing a scheme to construct the distribution functions in the particle gaps based on the lubrication theory and an algorithm for the “refilling” process near the shear periodic boundaries. With these developments, a direct numerical simulation of particle-laden HST is achieved with LBM. The turbulence modulation effects induced by particles are briefly discussed.

Particle-resolved direct numerical simulation of particle-laden turbulence modulation with high Stokes number monodisperse spheres

Graphic processing units (GPU)-accelerated direct numerical simulations of particle–fluid systems based on lattice Boltzmann method combined with discrete element method are successfully performed. This method is validated to be accurate and efficient in the four-way coupling simulation of particle–fluid systems. Particle-laden homogeneous isotropic turbulence under particle size dp=30.1η (the Kolmogorov length scale), a wide range of solid volume fraction ϕV=2%−20% and particle Stokes number St=503.87−50 387 are systematically studied. The additional energy dissipation rate εaddi induced by particles is quantitatively calculated. One criterion for turbulence enhancement or attenuation based on energy balance is proposed and successfully used in different particle-laden turbulence. The relative magnitude of two-way coupling rate ψ and particle-induced dissipation εaddi is the direct factor determining the modulation effect on turbulence. Turbulence laden with high Stokes number particles is enhanced. Turbulence laden with high volume fraction particles transited rapidly from enhancement to attenuation, which is attributed to the more rapid decay of ψ relative to εaddi in the freely decaying turbulence.

Particle dynamics in compressible turbulent vertical channel flows

In this work, we carry out direct numerical simulations of particle suspensions in the compressible turbulent vertical channel (TVC) flows with Mach number Ma = 1.5 and particle Stokes number St = 1–100. The compressibility effect is considered in the particle dynamic model for the first time in the study of compressible particle-laden wall turbulence. We find that in both incompressible and compressible flow, gravity weakens the wall-normal and spanwise fluctuations of particle velocities as the Stokes number increases. However, compared to the incompressible flow case, the compressible effect amplifies the mean velocity, fluctuations of velocity, and slip velocity of particle in the streamwise direction. The wall-normal and spanwise fluctuations of particle velocities are augmented by the compressible effect in the channel core region. Moreover, in the core region, the effect of fluid compressibility on the wall-normal and spanwise fluctuations of particle velocities attenuates as the Stokes number increases, indicating a competition between the compressible effect and the particle inertia effect. We, furthermore, conduct the quadrant analysis of the local fluctuation velocities of fluid at particle positions and observe preferential distributions in the second and the fourth quadrants at y+ = 12.5–13.5. For compressible TVC flows, the pattern of probability distributions is more elongated, and the percentage is slightly higher in the second and fourth quadrants than that of incompressible flows. This observation implies that more particles locate in the ejection and sweep events in compressible flows than that in incompressible flows, which is anticipated to influence the particle wall-normal transport.

Spectral response between particle and fluid kinetic energy in decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence

In particle-laden turbulence, the Fourier Lagrangian spectrum of each phase is regularly computed, and analytically derived response functions relate the Lagrangian spectrum of the fluid and the particle phase. However, due to the periodic nature of the Fourier basis, the analysis is restricted to statistically stationary flows. In the present work, utilizing the bases of time-focalized proper orthogonal decomposition (POD), this analysis is extended to temporally non-stationary turbulence. Studying two-way coupled particle-laden decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence for various Stokes numbers, it is demonstrated that the temporal POD modes extracted from the dispersed phase may be used for the expansion of both fluid and particle velocities. The POD Lagrangian spectrum of each phase may thus be computed from the same set of modal building blocks, allowing the evaluation of response functions in a POD frame of reference. Based on empirical evaluations, a model for response functions in non-stationary flows is proposed. The related energies of the two phases is well approximated by simple analytical expressions dependent on the particle Stokes number. It is found that the analytical expressions closely resemble those derived through the Fourier analysis of statistically stationary flows. These results suggest the existence of an inherent spectral symmetry underlying the dynamical systems consisting of particle-laden turbulence, a symmetry which spans across stationary/non-stationary particle-laden flow states.

Analysis and Discussion of Two-Way Coupling Effects in Particle-Laden Turbulent Channel Flow

This paper studies the turbulence modification caused by the presence of solid particles in fully developed channel flow by means of the point particle Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) approach. Inertial particles much smaller than the smallest vortical flow structures are considered, maintaining a volume fraction of the order , where inter-particle collisions are rare and have nearly no influence on flow development. To avoid concurrent effects that could mask the analysis of fluid turbulence interaction, gravity is not included in the study, and particle-smooth wall collisions are modelled as ideal reflections. The alteration of fluid turbulence dynamics by the particles is illustrated and discussed, providing an overview of the fluid-particle interaction phenomena occurring at both microscopic and macroscopic flow levels. Finally, the relation of such phenomena with drag-reducing effects by particles is demonstrated.

Evaluation of RANS-DEM and LES-DEM Methods in OpenFOAM for Simulation of Particle-Laden Turbulent Flows

CFD-DEM modelling of particle-laden turbulent flow is challenging in terms of the required and obtained CFD resolution, heavy DEM computations, and the limitations of the method. Here, we assess the efficiency of a particle-tracking solver in OpenFOAM with RANS-DEM and LES-DEM approaches under the unresolved CFD-DEM framework. Furthermore, we investigate aspects of the unresolved CFD-DEM method with regard to the coupling regime, particle boundary condition and turbulence modelling. Applying one-way and two-way coupling to our RANS-DEM simulations demonstrates that it is sufficient to include one-way coupling when the particle concentration is small (O ~ 10−5). Moreover, our study suggests an approach to estimate the particle boundary condition for cases when data is unavailable. In contrast to what has been previously reported for the adopted case, our RANS-DEM results demonstrate that simple dispersion models considerably underpredict particle dispersion and previously observed reasonable particle dispersion were due to an error in the numerical setup rather than the used dispersion model claiming to include turbulence effects on particle trajectories. LES-DEM may restrict extreme mesh refinement, and, under such scenarios, dynamic LES turbulence models seem to overcome the poor performance of static LES turbulence models. Sub-grade scale effects cannot be neglected when using coarse mesh resolution in LES-DEM and must be recovered with efficient modelling approaches to predict accurate particle dispersion.

Particle subgrid stress models for large Stokes numbers in particle-laden turbulence

For the Stokes number based on the Kolmogorov time scale ${St}_K$ up to $O(10^{2})$ , the particle subgrid stress (particle stress) in the volume-average framework is studied by comparing the fluid residual stress, the particle Smagorinsky model and the particle scale-similarity model. To obtain the numerical database of the particle-laden turbulence, two-way coupling direct numerical simulation is carried out with isotropic and anisotropic forcing conditions. As the particle stress is related to the local flow structure, which is not reflected by ${St}_K$ , a new Stokes number ${St}_R$ is introduced to extract the effect of the intensity of the fluid velocity fluctuation in the averaging volume. The degrees of agreement of the principal axes (eigenvectors) of the particle stress models to those of the fully resolved particle stress are regarded as functions of ${St}_R$ regardless of the averaging volume size. The fluid residual stress model shows the highest degree of agreement over a small ${St}_R$ range for both of the forcing cases, and similar predominance is also observed for the correlation coefficient reflecting the magnitude of the particle stress. The effects of ${St}_R$ , ${St}_K$ , the averaging volume size and the Reynolds number on the model coefficients are investigated based on the intensities of the deviatoric and isotropic parts of the fully resolved particle stress and its models. The Stokes number ${St}_R$ is found to be an essential factor to determine the model coefficients, as each effect is extracted reasonably by fixing ${St}_R$ .

Modulation of interphase, cross-scale momentum transfer of turbulent flows by preferentially concentrated inertial particles

Inertial particles can interact in two ways with carrier-phase turbulence, exchanging mass, momentum, and energy. This study proposes a wavelet multiresolution framework that analyzes spectral energy transfer involving two phases and multiple scales simultaneously. Its application to preferentially concentrated particle-laden turbulence shows the role of particle clusters in spectral energy transfer as well as the physical consistency of the subgrid-scale (SGS) Stokes number useful to analyze and develop an SGS model for two-way coupled particle-laden turbulence.

Hydrodynamic modeling of non-swirling and swirling gas-particle two-phase turbulent flow using large eddy simulation

Flow structures of non-swirling and swirling particle-laden turbulence are modeled using the large eddy simulation. Four-way coupling to reveal the interaction mechanism of gas to particle, particle to gas and particle-particle collisions is adopted by a new proposed subgrid scale (SGS) particle kinetic energy-granular temperature model. Evolution of particle vortices, particle coherent structures and particle dynamics are predicted numerically, and comparisons are also conducted. Predictions are in good agreement with experimental measurements. For non-swirling flows, the typical coherent structures, and larger vortices at downward region of gas flow are dominantly. However, particle transport characteristics are significantly different, distinctly coherent structures and more vortices have not been generated in additions to fewer ones at far distance from entrance. Meanwhile, fewer coherent structures and vortices that dispersed at corner recirculation are observed for swirling flow. Compared to gas flow, the number of particle vortices is less and Reynolds stress and kinetic energy transport behaviors of particle flow are relatively independent due to inertia. Gas fluctuations of shear stresses are approximately twice greater than those of particle in non-swirling flows. A novelty finding is that turbulent fluctuations and instantaneous gas vortices of non-swirling flow are stronger than swirling case.

Particle-Laden Turbulence: Progress and Perspectives

This review is motivated by the fast progress in our understanding of the physics of particle-laden turbulence in the last decade, partly due to the tremendous advances of measurement and simulation capabilities. The focus is on spherical particles in homogeneous and canonical wall-bounded flows. The analysis of recent data indicates that conclusions drawn in zero gravity should not be extrapolated outside of this condition, and that the particle response time alone cannot completely define the dynamics of finite-size particles. Several breakthroughs have been reported, mostly separately, on the dynamics and turbulence modifications of small inertial particles in dilute conditions and of large weakly buoyant spheres. Measurements at higher concentrations, simulations fully resolving smaller particles, and theoretical tools accounting for both phases are needed to bridge this gap and allow for the exploration of the fluid dynamics of suspensions, from laminar rheology and granular media to particulate turbulence.

Influence of particle-fluid density ratio on the dynamics of finite-size particles in homogeneous isotropic turbulent flows.

In this paper, direct numerical simulations of particle-laden homogeneous isotropic turbulence are performed using lattice Boltzmann method incorporating interpolated bounce-back scheme. Four different particle-fluid density ratios are considered to explore how particles with different particle-fluid density ratios respond to the turbulence. Overall particle dynamics in the homogeneous isotropic turbulence such as the Lagrangian statistics of single particle and the preferential concentration of particles are investigated. Results show that particle acceleration and angular acceleration are more intermittent than velocity and angular velocity for finite-size particles with different particle-fluid density ratios. The preferential concentration of particles is investigated using radial distribution function and Voronoï tessellation, and the preferential concentration is more profound for particles with two intermediate particle-fluid density ratios. The Voronoï analysis indicates that the distribution of Voronoï cells satisfy the log-normal distribution better than the gamma distribution. The mechanism of preferential concentration is analyzed using the sweep-stick mechanism and drift mechanism. Results show that although a higher probability of having particles located near the sticky points is found, the sticky mechanism is very weak for large density ratios. The particle clustering is then found to be better qualitatively described by the drift mechanism.

Structural subgrid scale model based on wavelet filter for large eddy simulation of particle-laden turbulence

Coherent vortex structures in subgrid scale (SGS) motions are important for preferential concentration and collision of particles with small and intermediate Stokes number (Xiong et al., 2019). In this study, a new large eddy simulation (LES) strategy that combines wavelet filtered large eddy simulation with a differential filter SGS model is proposed. First, a wavelet filtered direct numerical simulation (WFDNS) enables good preservation of SGS structures due to the high compressibility and local fidelity of the wavelet filter. Second, a differential filter (DF) model, containing only a parameter related to the nominal filter width, is used to dynamically reconstruct unresolved eddies. The SGS model presented here is verified using direct numerical simulation (DNS) data for particle-laden homogenous isotropic turbulence. Compared to the classical spectral-filtered DNS (FDNS) model, the new SGS model enables to achieve better agreement with DNS results related to the dispersed-phase statistics, such as particle acceleration, particle-seen fluid kinetic energy, particle-seen Lagrangian integral time etc. Furthermore, obtained results also exhibit the advantages of a proposed model over the stochastic Langevin model in the prediction of particle dynamics, especially collision-related statistics such as radial distribution function, radial relative velocities, and particle collision rates. Moreover, the model also demonstrates good performance in application to particle-pair related statistics at different Reynolds numbers and different filter depths. This is attributed to the ability of this model to multispectrally enhance coherent vortex structures in SGS, which is promising to apply for recovering SGS effects in the LES of turbulent particle-laden flows.

Scale-dependent statistics of inertial particle distribution in high Reynolds number turbulence

Multiscale statistical analyses of inertial particle distributions are presented to investigate the statistical signature of clustering and void regions in particle-laden incompressible isotropic turbulence. Three-dimensional direct numerical simulations of homogeneous isotropic turbulence at high Reynolds number ($Re_\lambda \gtrsim 200$) with up to $10^9$ inertial particles are performed for Stokes numbers ranging from $0.05$ to $5.0$. Orthogonal wavelet analysis is then applied to the computed particle number density fields. Scale-dependent skewness and flatness values of the particle number density distributions are calculated and the influence of Reynolds number $Re_\lambda$ and Stokes number $St$ is assessed. For $St \sim 1.0$, both the scale-dependent skewness and flatness values become larger as the scale decreases, suggesting intermittent clustering at small scales. For $St \le 0.2$, the flatness at intermediate scales, i.e. for scales larger than the Kolmogorov scale and smaller than the integral scale of the flow, increases as $St$ increases, and the skewness exhibits negative values at the intermediate scales. The negative values of the skewness are attributed to void regions. These results indicate that void regions at the intermediate sales are pronounced and intermittently distributed for such small Stokes numbers. As $Re_\lambda$ increases, the flatness increases slightly. For $Re_\lambda \ge 328$, the skewness shows negative values at large scales, suggesting that void regions are pronounced at large scales, while clusters are pronounced at small scales.

Regimes of heat transfer in finite-size particle suspensions

We present results of interface-resolved simulations of heat transfer in suspensions of finite-size neutrally-buoyant spherical particles for solid volume fractions up to 35% and bulk Reynolds numbers from 500 to 5600. An Immersed Boundary–Volume of Fluid method is used to solve the energy equation in the fluid and solid phase. We relate the heat transfer to the regimes of particle motion previously identified, i.e. a viscous regime at low volume fractions and low Reynolds number, particle-laden turbulence at high Reynolds and moderate volume fraction and particulate regime at high volume fractions. We show that in the viscous dominated regime, the heat transfer is mainly due to thermal diffusion with enhancement due to the particle-induced fluctuations. In the turbulent-like regime, we observe the largest enhancement of the global heat transfer, dominated by the turbulent heat flux. In the particulate shear-thickening regime, however, the heat transfer enhancement decreases as mixing is quenched by the particle migration towards the channel core. As a result, a compact loosely-packed core region forms and the contribution of thermal diffusion to the total heat transfer becomes significant once again. The global heat transfer becomes, in these flows at volume fractions larger than 25%, lower than in single phase turbulence.

A Frequency Analysis Method to Estimate the Relative Importance of Basset Force on Small Particles in Turbulence

The correct calculation of interphase forces exerted on particles is important for particle tracking and interphase interaction. The Basset history force, which accounts for unsteady drag effects, is often neglected in simulations because its calculation is very demanding in CPU time and memory requirements. Thus, it is significant to approximately estimate the relative importance of the Basset force before implementing relevant numerical simulations. In the present study, a frequency analysis method based on the characteristic frequency is developed to estimate the importance of the Basset force relative to the drag force. Both an analogy method and the Fourier analysis are used to estimate the characteristic frequency of the particle relative velocity. Then the frequency analysis method is verified by comparing the predicted values with the statistical values of the direct numerical simulations on the particle-laden channel turbulence. Within a wide range of particle parameters, the relative importance of the Basset force predicted by the frequency analysis method, both by the analogy method and via the Fourier analysis, agrees with that obtained from the direct numerical simulation. Although the amplitude of the Fourier transformation of the particle relative velocity reduced rapidly along with the dimensionless frequency, in cases where the particle Stokes number was not very large, it had a small but considerable peak under the dimensionless frequency from 1 to 1.6. This is caused by the interaction between light particles and the Kolmogorov dissipation vortex. It was also found that the Basset force was significant relative to the drag force in most cases of the present study.

Settling and clustering of snow particles in atmospheric turbulence

The effect of turbulence on snow precipitation is not incorporated into present weather forecasting models. Here we show evidence that turbulence is in fact a key influence on both fall speed and spatial distribution of settling snow. We consider three snowfall events under vastly different levels of atmospheric turbulence. We characterize the size and morphology of the snow particles, and we simultaneously image their velocity, acceleration and relative concentration over vertical planes approximately$30\ \textrm {m}^2$in area. We find that turbulence-driven settling enhancement explains otherwise contradictory trends between the particle size and velocity. The estimates of the Stokes number and the correlation between vertical velocity and local concentration are consistent with the view that the enhanced settling is rooted in the preferential sweeping mechanism. When the snow vertical velocity is large compared to the characteristic turbulence velocity, the crossing trajectories effect results in strong accelerations. When the conditions of preferential sweeping are met, the concentration field is highly non-uniform and clustering appears over a wide range of scales. These clusters, identified for the first time in a naturally occurring flow, display the signature features seen in canonical settings: power-law size distribution, fractal-like shape, vertical elongation and large fall speed that increases with the cluster size. These findings demonstrate that the fundamental phenomenology of particle-laden turbulence can be leveraged towards a better predictive understanding of snow precipitation and ground snow accumulation. They also demonstrate how environmental flows can be used to investigate dispersed multiphase flows at Reynolds numbers not accessible in laboratory experiments or numerical simulations.

Divergence and convergence of inertial particles in high-Reynolds-number turbulence

Abstract