Numerical Analysis Seminar

Wednesday, March 5, 2008

Abstract

Particulate flows are representative of many industrial situations in the Oil and Gas industry (Hydrates agglomeration handling, cuttings removal in drilling operations, sand management in production ...). The understanding of these complex phenomena with solid/solid and fluid/solid interactions in moderate to highly concentrated suspension flows is crucial to enhance the efficiency of industrial processes.

In this work, we simulate the motion of solid particles in a viscous fluid using a 2D/3D direct numerical simulation method. The particles are moved using a dry granular solver based on a distinct element method (DEM). A finite element approximation is used to compute the fluid motion. The solid-liquid coupling is performed by a fictitious domain method with distributed Lagrange multiplier and an operator-splitting algorithm. This method consists in filling the particles by a fictitious fluid whose rheology is obtained thanks to the projection of the solid velocity field on its fluid shade (the fluid velocity field in particles localization is monitored by the particles velocity). The DEM is usually used for the simulation of interaction between spherical particles. The main novelty of this work is the handling of polyhedral solids in a viscous fluid.

We will show some examples of dry granular computations and fluid/particles interactions in a viscous Newtonian fluid. We will focus on the influence of the angularity in the sedimentation of a single particle and in the drafting kissing and tumbling phenomenon.

This is a joint work with F. Pradel (Institut Francais du Petrole), A. Wachs (Institut Francais du Petrole) and R. Glowinski (Laboratoire Jacques Louis Lions, Universite Pierre et Marie Curie, Paris, France)