On the Volume Fraction Effects of Inertial Colliding Particles in Homogeneous Isotropic Turbulence

Abstract

The main objective of the present study is the investigation of volume fraction effects on the collision statistics of nonsettling inertial particles in a granular medium as well as suspended in an unsteady homogeneous isotropic turbulent flow. For this purpose, different studies with mono-disperse Lagrangian point-particles having different Stokes numbers are considered in which the volume fraction of the dispersed phase is varied between 0.001 and 0.01. The fluid behavior is computed using a three-dimensional Lattice-Boltzmann method. The carrier-fluid turbulence is maintained at Taylor microscale Reynolds number 65.26 by applying a spectral forcing scheme. The Lagrangian particle tracking is based on considering the drag force only and a deterministic model is applied for collision detection. The influence of the particle phase on the fluid flow is neglected at this stage. The particle size is maintained at a constant value for all Stokes numbers so that the ratio of particle diameter to Kolmogorov length scale is fixed at 0.58. The variation of the particle Stokes number was realized by modifying the solids density. The observed particle Reynolds and Stokes numbers are in between [1.07, 2.61] and [0.34, 9.79], respectively. In the present simulations, the fluid flow and the particle motion including particle-particle collisions are based on different temporal discretization. Hence, an adaptive time stepping scheme is introduced. The particle motion as well as the occurrence of inter-particle collisions is characterized among others by Lagrangian correlation functions, the velocity angles between colliding particles and the collision frequencies. Initially, a fluid-free particle system is simulated and compared with the principles of the kinetic theory to validate the implemented deterministic collision model. Moreover, a selection of results obtained for homogeneous isotropic turbulence is compared with in literature available DNS and LES results as well. According to the performed simulations, the collision rate of particles with large Stokes numbers strongly depends on the adopted volume fraction, whereas for particles with small Stokes numbers the influence of particle volume fraction is less pronounced.