Turbulent channel flow of a dense binary mixture of rigid particles

TL;DR

This study uses direct numerical simulations to analyze how a binary mixture of rigid particles affects turbulent channel flow, revealing particle segregation, altered flow statistics, and size-dependent clustering and collision behaviors.

Contribution

It provides new insights into the effects of particle size distribution on turbulence, segregation, and collision dynamics in dense suspensions.

Findings

Small particles segregate at the wall, influencing near-wall turbulence.

Larger particles increase overall drag in the flow.

Particle clustering and collision rates depend on particle size and concentration.

Abstract

We study turbulent channel flow of a binary mixture of finite-size neutrally-buoyant rigid particles by means of interface-resolved direct numerical simulations. We fix the bulk Reynolds number and total solid volume fraction, $Re_b = 5600$ and $\Phi=20\%$, and vary the relative fraction of small and large particles. The binary mixture consists of particles of two different sizes, $2h/d_l=20$ and $2h/d_s=30$ where $h$ is the half channel height and $d_l$ and $d_s$ the diameter of the large and small particles. While the particulate flow statistics exhibit a significant alteration of the mean velocity profile and turbulent fluctuations with respect to the unladen flow, the differences between the mono-disperse and bi-disperse cases are small. However, we observe a clear segregation of small particles at the wall in binary mixtures, which affects the dynamics of the near wall region and thus the overall drag. This results in a higher drag in suspensions with a larger amount of large particles. As regards bi-disperse effects on the particle dynamics, a non-monotonic variation of the particle dispersion in the spanwise (homogeneous) direction is observed when increasing the percentage of small/large particles. Finally, we note that particles of the same size tend to cluster more at contact whereas the dynamics of the large particles gives highest collision kernels due to a higher approaching speed.