Model development for the study of dense particle-laden flows at the meso-scale

• Applicant: Professor Dr. Berend van Wachem
• Subject Area: Fluid Mechanics ; Mechanical Process Engineering
• Term: since 2021
• Project identifier: Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Project number 457515061

Dense particle-laden flows can be encountered in many natural and industrial processes, such as the flow of red blood cells in plasma or the fluidisation of coal or biomass in furnaces, to name just a few. These flows rely on an intricate balance between the flow wall, flow-particle, particle-wall, and particle-particle interactions. Predicting such flows with fully resolved or true direct numerical simulations is usually much too computationally expensive. Meso-scale approaches, such as Lagrangian particle tracking, allow to predict the behaviour of much larger particle-laden flow systems than fully resolved approaches. However, they use reduced models instead of resolving the flow around individual particles, which currently come with very stringent constraints.This is a proposal to deliver a novel volume-filtered Euler-Lagrange framework for predicting the behaviour of dense particle-laden flows at the meso-scale. This framework will bridge the gap currently existing between fully resolved simulations and classical Lagrangian particle tracking approaches. Models will be developed to accurately couple the particles with the flow. This is achieved by determining and taking into account the local effect of each particle within the flow, also accounting for the presence of walls. The proposed framework will produce much more accurate results than current Lagrangian particle tracking frameworks, while only requiring a fraction of the cost of fully resolved simulations.

• DFG Programme: Research Grants
• Co-Investigator: Professor Dr. Fabien Evrard