Study of the hydraulic transport of non-spherical particles in a pipeline based on the CFD-DEM

Abstract

Slurry pipeline transport, which is widely used in dredging, is an important method of solid material transportation. The internal structure information of flows with different shaped particles must be obtained to investigate the effects of different particle shapes on the efficiency and flow characteristics of slurry transport. To solve this problem, a numerical method which couples the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and the discrete element method (DEM) is established in this study. Using the coupled CFD-DEM, the internal flow structure for spherical, square platens and line-shaped coarse particles is studied, and the working conditions under which clogging of non-spherical particles occurs are explored. The flow states of different shaped particles at velocities of 2, 4.1 and 8 ms−1 are qualitatively analyzed in a horizontal pipeline system within the diameter of 100 mm, and quantitative analyses of the concentration distribution in different flow regimes are performed. The study describes the particle flow characteristics under clogging conditions based on the flow regime transition and concentration distribution. Abnormal transport is analyzed using qualitative and quantitative indications. In addition, along with the particle force and robustness of transport, the conditions for stable transport are discussed.

Computational Fluid Dynamics Modelling of Liquid–Solid Slurry Flows in Pipelines: State-of-the-Art and Future Perspectives

“…The study presents a throughout validation in terms of concentration profile, and then the model was extensively used to find out difficult-to-measure features of the flow for the same conditions. Some numerical simulations can be found in the literature [112,113], which partly fall both into the Euler-Euler and the Euler-Lagrange approaches. It is mostly a combination of EDEM and Ansys-Fluent software, where the coupling between solid and liquid phases is based on Euler-Euler modelling, while the motion of individual particles is realized in the EDEM program.…”

Numerical identification of critical erosion prone areas in tube heat exchangers

“…The turbulent intensity of 10% was specified for the inlet, while the value of the pipe diameter was applied for the turbulent length scale. The transport of particles can be simulated by Lagrangian-Eulerian (LE) approach and CFD-CEM method, such as, Badr et al (Badr et al, 2006) used LE method to track particles in an air-cooled heat exchanger, Greifzu et al (Greifzu et al, 2016) assessed LE approach in modeling particle motion in incompressible, turbulent flow with OpenFOAM and ANSYS FLUENT, Chen et al (Chen et al, 2020) used CFD-DEM method in the simulation of slurry transport in a pipeline, and Huang et al (Huang et al, 2015) used CFD-DEM to analyze the transient solid-liquid flow in a centrifugal pump. The wellknown Lagrangian particle tracking method has been used for various dilute systems, where trajectories of a finite number of dispersed particles were solved from their transient momentum, as described as Eqs 7and (8).…”

Particle Distribution and Motion in Six-Stage Centrifugal Pump by Means of Slurry Experiment and CFD-DEM Simulation

“…The coupling of CFD and DEM calculations allows the fluid and particle characteristics of solid-liquid two-phase flows to be obtained very accurately, which is very useful in slurry conveying simulation. Chen [19] used the CFD-DEM coupling method to simulate the working conditions of horizontal pipelines conveying different shapes of particles and different concentrations to obtain the relationship between the influence of particle characteristics on slurry conveying efficiency and flow characteristics. Cheng [19] used the CFD-DEM coupling method to analyze the contact forces and particle velocity characteristics of non-spherical particles of different shapes and spherical particles of different particle sizes with a single-channel centrifugal pump.…”