Influence of particle-fluid density ratio on the dynamics of finite-size particles in homogeneous isotropic turbulent flows

In this paper, direct numerical simulations of particle-laden homogeneous isotropic turbulence are performed using lattice Boltzmann method incorporating interpolated bounce-back scheme. Four different particle-fluid density ratios are considered to explore how particles with different particle-fluid density ratios respond to the turbulence. Overall particle dynamics in the homogeneous isotropic turbulence such as the Lagrangian statistics of single particle and the preferential concentration of particles are investigated. Results show that particle acceleration and angular acceleration are more intermittent than velocity and angular velocity for finite-size particles with different particle-fluid density ratios. The preferential concentration of particles is investigated using radial distribution function and Voronoi tessellation, and the preferential concentration is more profound for particles with two intermediate particle-fluid density ratios. The Voronoi analysis indicates that the distribution of Voronoi cells satisfy the log-normal distribution better than the gamma distribution. The mechanism of preferential concentration is analyzed using the sweep-stick mechanism and drift mechanism. Results show that although a higher probability of having particles located near the sticky points is found, the sticky mechanism is very weak for large density ratios. The particle clustering is then found to be better qualitatively described by the drift mechanism.