Turbulent particle mass flux in a two-phase shear flow

This paper presents measurements of mean and rms of fluctuations of concentration, particle turbulent velocities, shear stress and covariance of the fluctuations of particle number density and particle velocities in a horizontal plane shear layer. Particle Image Velocimetry (PIV) was used to obtain simultaneously particle velocities and number densities to evaluate models for the prediction of particle dispersion in Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes calculation approaches. The flow was horizontal with the low speed side on top and laden with nearly mono-dispersed 55 and 90 µm glass beads, which were injected at the upper, low speed side of the flow. The Stokes number of the particles was in the range of 0.41 to 4.3 and the drift parameter due to gravity was in the range 0.18 to 1.5. The experimental results quantified how particle ‘centrifuging’ by the large fluid vortices influenced the measured quantities. The turbulent particle mass flux was compared with models based on the gradient of mean particle concentration. Different dispersion coefficients were evaluated by introducing the measured quantities into the model equation and it was found that dispersion coefficients based on the fluid eddy diffusivity performed poorly leading to an order of magnitude errors. A dispersion coefficient in tensor form, based on the product of particle shear stress and particle integral time scale, led to good agreement with measured turbulent particle mass fluxes with errors between 0 and 50%.