Coupling of smoothed particle hydrodynamics and finite volume method for two-dimensional spouted beds

A coupled method with smoothed particle hydrodynamics (SPH) and finite volume method (FVM) is proposed in this work for the simulation of the particle dynamics in two-dimensional spouted beds. Based on the pseudo-fluid model, SPH is used for discrete phase to trace the movement of each individual particle and FVM for continue phase to compute the turbulent fluid. Two phases are coupled through effects of drag force, gas pressure and volume fraction of each phase. A two-dimensional tapered-based spouted bed is chosen as a case study to demonstrate the performance of the SPH–FVM coupled algorithm. The simulation results show a good agreement with the experimental data and other simulation results by the two-fluid model and discrete element method in the literature. The spouted shape, time-averaged particle velocities and particle vertical velocities in the spout are analyzed and the distribution of gas flow field and turbulent kinetic energy are then discussed. It indicates that the present method is more suitable to study the fluidization within the spouted beds.