CFD-DEM simulation of fluid suspended particle response behaviour subject to transverse acoustic standing fields

M Dabic and DA Deglon and CJ Meyer, PROGRESS IN COMPUTATIONAL FLUID DYNAMICS, 16, 1-13 (2016).

The aim of the study was to develop a self-contained computational CFD- DEM model incorporating an additional acoustic force, using open source parallel codes, OpenFOAM (R), LIGGGHTS and CFDEMcoupling. The model was tested by simulating fluid transported particle deflection phenomena due to acoustically induced forces. Particles were inserted in bulk flow, near the bottom inlet of a relatively large scale vertically orientated duct and carried through at various flow rates to near the top outlet, whilst being continuously subjected to a standing acoustic wave field which forced particles to periodic planes of low pressure along the cross section. Flow was modelled using RANS momentum equations and a k - epsilon turbulence model. Simulations were qualitatively validated by varying relevant parameters as well as correlating particle vertical travel distances to transverse deflections. The model confirmed deflection, simulated all functional dependencies as expected and serves henceforth as a foundation upon which further complexity can be built.

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