"Obtaining insight into environmental multiphase flows via particle-resolving simulations"

Dear All,

Mathematical Soft Matter Unit (Fried Unit) would like to invite you to a Seminar by Dr. Bernhard Vowinckel from University of California, Santa Barbara.

Date: Thursday, February 23^rd, 2017
Time: 14:00-15:00
Venue: C016, LevelC, Lab 1
 

Speaker:
Dr. Bernhard Vowinckel
Department of Mechanical Engineering
University of California, Santa Barbara, USA

Title:
Obtaining insight into environmental multiphase flows via particle-resolving simulations

Abstract:
Multiphase flows are ubiquitous features of many environmental and engineering systems. The understanding and prediction of the resulting transport is of vital interest for many environmental and industrial applications, because they determine the performance and design of facilities such as bridge peers or sewerage and pipeline systems to mention but a few. Paramount examples are phenomena like the shearing of dense suspensions and bed-load transport in a horizontal channel,  which are still far from being well understood. Only recently, the computational power has become available to carry out Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) of large multiphase systems. In particular, the Immersed Boundary Method has proved to be an efficient tool to represent the disperse phase accurately. This approach together with a sophisticated collision model for particle contact provides detailed insight into the complex physics of particle-laden flows.  In this talk, results from DNS of horizontal channel flows are shown to address the physical mechanisms of particle clustering and collective motion as well as erosion in dense particle systems. The developed flow patterns are analyzed by suitable statistical tools to determine relevant flow features reflecting the equilibrium of the fluid-particle interaction.