Super-quadric CFD-DEM-VOF modelling of gas–solid-liquid systems
Xinxin Tang, Shuai Wang, Yansong Shen
Abstract
In many chemical engineering processes, gas–solid-liquid flow involving nonspherical solid particles is commonly practised and should be modelled for process understanding and optimisation; however, reliable modelling along with parallelization is still lacking. This work combines an unresolved CFD-DEM-VOF coupling framework, featuring a super-quadric particle shape model to model the gas-nonspherical particle-liquid flow and a “ghost domain” algorithm to improve the parallelization efficiency. The model is applied to two cases – cuboid particle sedimentation and dambreak formation, for model effectiveness demonstration. According to the simulation results, the model effectively captures the interactions between particles and phases in the relevant scenarios. This is reflected by the agreements of numerical simulations and experimental or analytical data in these two cases. Moreover, the parallelization technique utilizing the “ghost domain” displays remarkable steadiness and noteworthy efficiency. As the processor number increases from 2, 4, 8, 16, to 32, the running time obviously decreases almost linearly. This research introduces an innovative computational approach for simulating systems containing gas, non-spherical particles, and liquid. It demonstrates the method’s potential to analyze interactions between particles and fluids in the unresolved framework.