Effects of sub-grid gas turbulence on the meso-scale hydrodynamics of fluidized gas-solid flows

• Autor(a) principal: Mouallem, Joseph
• Data de Publicação: 2018
• Tipo de documento: Tese
• Idioma: eng
• Título da fonte: Biblioteca Digital de Teses e Dissertações da USP
• Texto Completo: http://www.teses.usp.br/teses/disponiveis/18/18147/tde-08112018-170038/
• topic: Escoamento gás-sólido; Fluidização; Fluidization; Gas-solid flow; Highly resolved simulation; Modelagem de dois fluidos; Modelagem sub-malha; Simulação altamente resolvida; Sub-grid modeling; Turbulence; Turbulência; Two-fluid modeling

Filtered two-fluid models used to perform large scale simulations of gas-solid fluidized flows of industrial risers require closures for filtered parameters such as filtered and residual stresses, and interphase interaction forces mainly effective drag. Closure models for those filtered parameters may be derived by averaging over results of highly resolved simulations with microscopic two-fluid modeling. This work is a contribution in that context. Recent models for filtered parameters have been written as functions of filter size, filtered solid volume fraction, and filtered slip velocity. A recent study showed that macro-scale variables like domain average solid volume fraction and gas Reynolds number also significantly affect the filtered parameters. In the current work, in addition to these filtered and macro-scale variables, the effects of two new variables over the filtered parameters are investigated: filtered solid kinetic energy and sub-grid gas turbulence. It is shown that the filtered solid kinetic energy should be accounted for in the concerning correlations, thereby improving accuracy. Regarding gas turbulence, literature shows it has no significant effects on the motion of high Stokes particles. Extending on literature, this work investigates the sub-grid gas turbulence effects on meso-scale structures formed of high Stokes particles. Results showed that sub-grid gas turbulence has no significant effects on the meso-scale structures and corresponding filtered parameters. The open source code MFIX was used for all simulations. Ranges of dilute concentration of solid and gas Reynolds number typical of riser flow regimes were considered. A modified two-fluid model with microscopic formulation was used. The sub-grid gas turbulence was generated by means of a forcing function procedure which was implemented in the physical space, over the gravitational term of the momentum conservation equation of the gas phase. First, numerical simulations of the gas phase alone were performed, accounting for literature available data, in order to set a turbulent gas field and calibrate the turbulence intensity. Then, the forcing function was introduced in to the two-fluid model and various gas-solid flows were simulated. While the current results show the necessity of accounting for additional variables in the filtered parameter correlation, they also make it clear the necessity of further developments that are required in the search for better accuracy.