Unsteady numerical analysis of the liquid-solid two-phase flow around a step using Eulerian-Lagrangian and the filter-based RANS method

The present study adopts the filter-based RANS (k-epsilon) method to analyze unsteady liquid-solid two-phase flow around a step in a rectangle channel. Numerical simulation was carried out in three dimensions using Eulerian-Lagrangian approach, in which the continuous phase is treated by Eulerian method and the motions of the dispersed phases are solved by Lagrangian method. The filter-based unsteady RANS (k-epsilon) model was implemented via user-defined functions in ANSYS Fluent 14.0. The flow field measurement by PIV experiment and the pressure fluctuation downstream the step were carried out for validation. Based on the comparison between the numerical and experimental data, results show that the pressure and velocity distributions were successfully reproduced. Compared with the standard k-epsilon model, the filter-based model can improve the prediction accuracy for wake flow and particle motion downstream the step. Furthermore, the numerical simulation reveals that the vorticity described by Q-criterion, promotes the particle motion at the wake area. However, the significant discrepancy of the particle distribution in the wake indicates the importance of turbulence modeling method for liquid-solid two-phase flow simulation.