Mesoscale simulations of particulate flows with parallel distributed Lagrange multiplier technique

Fluid particulate flows are common phenomena in nature and industry. Modeling of such flows at micro and macro levels as well establishing relationships between these approaches are needed to understand properties of the particulate matter. We propose a computational technique based on the direct numerical simulation of the particulate flows. The numerical method is based on the distributed Lagrange multiplier technique following the ideas of Glowinski et al. [16] and Patankar [30]. Each particle is explicitly resolved on an Eulerian grid as a separate domain, using solid volume fractions. The fluid equations are solved through the entire computational domain, however, Lagrange multiplier constrains are applied inside the particle domain such that the fluid within any volume associated with a solid particle moves as an incompressible rigid body. Mutual forces for the fluid-particle interactions are internal to the system. Particles interact with the fluid via fluid dynamic equations, resulting in implicit fluid-rigid body coupling relations that produce realistic fluid flow around the particles (i.e., no-slip boundary conditions). The particle-particle interactions are implemented using explicit force-displacement interactions for frictional inelastic particles similar to the DEM method of Cundall et al. [10] with some modifications using a volume of an overlapping region as an input to the contact forces. The method is flexible enough to handle arbitrary particle shapes and size distributions. A parallel implementation of the method is based on the SAMRAI (Structured Adaptive Mesh Refinement Application Infrastructure) library, which allows handling of large amounts of rigid particles and enables local grid refinement. Accuracy and convergence of the presented method has been tested against known solutions for a falling particle as well as by examining fluid flows through stationary particle beds (periodic and cubic packing). To evaluate code performance and validate particle contact physics algorithm, we performed simulations of a representative experiment conducted at the U.C. Berkeley Thermal Hydraulic Lab for pebble flow through a narrow opening.