EFFICIENT PARTICLE TRACKING ALGORITHM FOR TWO-PHASE FLOWS IN GEOMETRIES USING CURVILINEAR COORDINATES

Abstract

Particle dispersion in turbulent carrier flows is described using a Eulerian-Lagrangian hybrid model The body-fitted coordinates are used for the finite-volume solution to the Eulerian equations, whereas the mesh-free Lagrangian formulation is used for the solution to the Lagrangian equations. A novel numerical approach is developed to locate whether a particle stays in an arbitrary Eulerian control volume and to handle particle-wall interactions. The developed approach is characterized by its robustness and high computational efficiency. Details of the approach are given for a two-dimensional case. However, it is straightforwardly extendible to three-dimensional two-phase flows. As a demonstration, numerical results are presented for a three-dimensional, particle-laden turbulent gas flow in an industrial gas meter. It is found that the developed approach offers much higher computational efficiency than the existing circular-search approach. As a result, the particle-locating procedure with an optimal search path for irregular Eulerian control volumes becomes as efficient as that of the conventional tabular expression in rectangular Eulerian control volumes.

Notes

Address correspondence to Dr. X.-Q. Chen, Av. dos Boris Amigos, Lote 1, 2A, 273S Cacém Codex, Portugal. E-mail; [email protected]