Neural stochastic differential equations for particle dispersion in large-eddy simulations of homogeneous isotropic turbulence

TL;DR

This paper introduces neural stochastic differential equations coupled with large-eddy simulations to accurately model particle dispersion in turbulent flows, significantly improving predictions over traditional methods.

Contribution

The paper develops a novel neural network-based stochastic differential equation model trained on DNS data to enhance particle transport predictions in turbulence simulations.

Findings

Model predicts particle kinetic energy within 5% of DNS data.

Variance of uncorrelated particle velocity predicted within 10%.

No model underpredicts particle energy by 40%.

Abstract

In dilute turbulent particle-laden flows, such as atmospheric dispersion of pollutants or virus particles, the dynamics of tracer-like to low inertial particles are significantly altered by the fluctuating motion of the carrier fluid phase. Neglecting the effects of fluid velocity fluctuations on particle dynamics causes poor prediction of particle transport and dispersion. To account for the effects of fluid phase fluctuating velocity on the particle transport, stochastic differential equations coupled with large-eddy simulation are proposed to model the fluid velocity seen by the particle. The drift and diffusion terms in the stochastic differential equation are modelled using neural networks ('neural stochastic differential equations'). The neural networks are trained with direct numerical simulations (DNS) of decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence at low and moderate Reynolds numbers. The predictability of the proposed models are assessed against DNS results through a priori analyses and a posteriori simulations of decaying homogeneous isotropic turbulence at low-to-high Reynolds numbers. Total particle fluctuating kinetic energy is under-predicted by 40% with no model, compared to the DNS data. In contrast, the proposed model predictions match total particle fluctuating kinetic energy to within 5% of the DNS data for low to high-inertia particles. For inertial particles, the model matches the variance of uncorrelated particle velocity to within 10% of DNS results, compared to 60-70% under-prediction with no model. It is concluded that the proposed model is applicable for flow configurations involving tracer and inertial particles, such as transport and dispersion of pollutants or virus particles.