Clustering of inelastic soft spheres in homogeneous turbulence

TL;DR

This study uses numerical simulations to explore how dissipative collisions affect the clustering behavior of inelastic soft spheres in homogeneous turbulence, revealing a transition from turbulence-driven to collision-driven particle distribution regimes.

Contribution

It introduces a coupled simulation approach combining discrete element and Lattice-Boltzmann methods to analyze particle clustering under varying dissipation conditions.

Findings

Dissipative collisions significantly impact particle clustering even at moderate volume fractions.

A transition exists from turbulence-influenced to collision-influenced particle distributions.

The study highlights the importance of collision dissipation in turbulent particle dynamics.

Abstract

In this paper we numerically investigate the influence of dissipation during particle collisions in an homogeneous turbulent velocity field by coupling a discrete element method to a Lattice-Boltzmann simulation with spectral forcing. We show that even at moderate particle volume fractions the influence of dissipative collisions is important. We also investigate the transition from a regime where the turbulent velocity field significantly influences the spatial distribution of particles to a regime where the distribution is mainly influenced by particle collisions.