A correction scheme for two-way coupled point-particle simulations on anisotropic grids

Abstract

The accuracy of Lagrangian point-particle models for simulation of particle-laden flows may degrade when the particle and fluid momentum equations are two-way coupled. In these cases the fluid velocity at the location of the particle, which is often used as an estimation of the undisturbed velocity, is altered by the presence of the particle, modifying the slip velocity and producing an erroneous prediction of coupling forces between fluid and particle. In this article, we propose a correction scheme to eliminate this error and predict the undisturbed fluid velocity accurately. Conceptually, in this method, the computation cell is treated as a solid object immersed in the fluid that is subjected to the two-way coupling force and dragged at a velocity that is identical to the disturbance created by the particle. The proposed scheme is generic as it can be applied to unstructured grids with arbitrary geometry and particles that have different size and density. At its crudest form for isotropic grids, the present correction scheme reduces to dividing the Stokes drag by $1 - 0.75\Lambda$, where $\Lambda$ is the ratio of the particle diameter to the grid size. The accuracy of the proposed scheme is evaluated by comparing the computed settling velocity of individual and pair of particles under gravity on anisotropic rectilinear grids against analytical solutions. This comparison shows up to two orders of magnitude reduction in error in cases where the particle is up to 5 times larger than the grid that may have an aspect ratio of over 10. Furthermore, a comparison against the particle-resolved simulation of decaying turbulence demonstrates the excellent accuracy of the proposed scheme.