CFD – DEM Coupling for Modeling of Fluid Flow with Accurate Particle Representation

Particle laden flows are encountered in many industries including oil and gas, agroindustry, pharmaceutics, mining, and many others. Eulerian granular and Langrangian approaches in multiphase CFD are commonly used to model fluid-particle flows for some these applications. However multiphase CFD has limitations due to the lack of constitutive models that adequately describe the range of particle characteristics.
The coupling between DEM and CFD is a promising approach and broadens the range of particle-fluid processes that can be handled with numerical simulation.
This presentation will provide an overview and latest development of modelling approaches for the simulation of both dilute and dense-phase fluid-particle flows. In addition, the coupling approach for Rocky DEM and ANSYS FLUENT will be showcased, with few interesting applications examples for modeling complex flows where fluid details are needed and key interest involves model particle shape, particle break-up, separation, segregation and mixing.