Online

Sala, Kyle Paul

Mechanical Engineering

2013

MS

The current research seeks to develop a computational model that accurately describes particle dispersion in turbulent flow. Current particle dispersion models do not accurately predict the small-scale clumping of particles in turbulent flow that occurs due to interaction with turbulent eddies. A new stochastic vortex structure (SVS) model was developed and compared with current stochastic Lagrangian models (SLM) for turbulent flows. To examine what characteristics of the fluid flow field that lead to dispersion of particles, a number of non trivial measures were used. A discrete-element model is used to transport particle locations for cases with and without adhesive forces. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) are used as a baseline for comparison between the two models. Initial results show that the SVS model matches the spatial structure of the flow field of DNS reasonably well, while the SLMs do not. Investigation of particle collision rate suggest that while SVS matches the large length scales of flow, it omits the smaller scales of the flow.