Solid–liquid two-phase flow in deep-sea mining pipelines based on CFD–DEM

Owing to the scarcity of terrestrial mineral resources, deep-sea mining has gradually become a popular topic of research. As a feasible solution for deep-sea mining, pipeline transportation has become increasingly important. Here, the CFD–DEM framework is used to study the flow law of particles of different sizes in deep-sea mining pipelines. The numerical results, which were verified by experiments, indicated that the particle size must be less than 1/3rd of the diameter of the mining pipeline.