A particle-size dependent smoothing scheme for polydisperse Euler-Lagrange simulations

In Euler-Lagrange models for particulate systems, the information exchange of multiphase coupling terms, i.e. drag force, heat transfer, or mass transfer, is often smoothed from particles' location to nearby computational cells when the cell and particle sizes are comparable. The diffusion-based smoothing is among the most popular approach. However, when it comes to polydisperse systems, the state-of-the-art constant diffusivity approach does not consider variation in particle sizes, resulting in an even smoothing of exchanged information across all particles with different sizes. In this paper, a particle-size dependent smoothing scheme named "non-constant diffusivity approach" is proposed. This approach distributes the exchanged information based on the local Sauter diameter d32 such that the area of influence per particle varies by size. The one-dimensional analytical solution of the non-constant diffusivity approach is first derived and two control parameters L⁎ and S are identified, where L⁎ determines the characteristic length of the diffusivity and S determines the magnitude of the diffusivity. Together they control the characteristic length scale ℓ˜c of the smoothing operation. In the one-dimensional study, it is found that the proposed smoothing method is most suitable for the dilute particulate regime. The investigation is extended to a three-dimensional dilute particle flow based on the experiment of the CRIEPI (Central Research Institute of Electric Power Industry) pulverized coal burner. It is shown that using the non-constant diffusivity smoothing, the prediction of the O2 concentration is more accurate than when using the constant diffusivity smoothing approach, which assumes a universal smoothing length for all sizes of particles. The findings suggest that when it comes to polydisperse particulate systems, the area of influence per particle on the fluid depends on the particle size. The proposed non-constant diffusivity approach can describe that with the benefits of cheap computational cost, conservation of exchanged quantities, and easy-to-implement.