Numerical and experimental investigation of the morphology development of expansion clouds by a powder jet flow

Abstract Explosion suppression is often the preferred method of explosion attenuation in industry. The morphology development of suppression clouds is important for the design of necessary suppression systems. This paper presents a numerical and experimental investigation of the growth of powder dispersion as it expands from a discharge nozzle. A Lagrangian stochastic particle-tracking approach and the renormalised group k - e turbulence model are adopted in the flow field solver for the dispersed and continuous phases. The flow fields coupled with the particle interactions are predicted. The dispersion characteristics of the expansion of the powder cloud through a pipe for short intervals of time are investigated. This was compared with (1) captured images from experiments, (2) experimental data, and (3) results of previous simulations. Particle positions along the jet are presented. The effects of flow rate on the development of the cloud and a comparison with experimental results are also presented. It is noted that the coverage of the powder cloud can be controlled by the flow rate of the jet, and the developing length of the cloud is more influenced by the flow rate of jet flow than the developing width. The good qualitative agreements achieved are useful for further optimisation of product design.

[1]  S. A. Morsi,et al.  An investigation of particle trajectories in two-phase flow systems , 1972, Journal of Fluid Mechanics.

[2]  M. Tanaka,et al.  Direct numerical simulation of the basic phase-interactions in liquid turbulent channel flow with immiscible droplets , 1997 .

[3]  Clayton T. Crowe,et al.  Numerical models for two-phase turbulent flows , 1996 .

[4]  K. Kuo.  Principles of combustion , 1986 .

[5]  P. E. Moore.  Suppressants for the control of industrial explosions , 1996 .

[6]  George Vahala,et al.  Renormalization Group (RG) in Turbulence: Historical and Comparative Perspective , 1997 .

[7]  Yuji Tomita,et al.  Experimental investigation of a free falling powder jet and the air entrainment , 2001 .

[8]  Olivier Simonin,et al.  Direct numerical simulations of heat transfer by solid particles suspended in homogeneous isotropic turbulence , 1998 .

[9]  Said Elghobashi,et al.  On predicting particle-laden turbulent flows , 1994 .

[10]  R. Glowinski,et al.  A distributed Lagrange multiplier/fictitious domain method for particulate flows , 1999 .

[11]  B. P. Leonard,et al.  A stable and accurate convective modelling procedure based on quadratic upstream interpolation , 1990 .

[12]  Daniel Huilier,et al.  Lagrangian predictions of the dispersion of heavy particles in a dilute two-phase flow : On the inertia effect , 1998 .

[13]  A. Gosman,et al.  Aspects of Computer Simulation of Liquid-Fueled Combustors , 1983 .

[14]  Rolf K. Eckhoff,et al.  Dust Explosions in the Process Industries , 1991 .

[15]  Chuguang Zheng,et al.  A second-order-moment–Monte-Carlo model for simulating swirling gas–particle flows , 2001 .

[16]  David Migdal,et al.  A Source Flow Model for Continuum Gas-Particle Flow , 1967 .

[17]  I. E. Barton.  Exponential-Lagrangian Tracking Schemes Applied to Stokes Law , 1996 .

[18]  Farzad Mashayek,et al.  Simulation and Reynolds stress modeling of particle-laden turbulent shear flows , 1999 .

[19]  Roland Glowinski,et al.  A distributed Lagrange multiplier/fictitious domain method for viscoelastic particulate flows , 2000 .

[20]  Xi-Qing Chen,et al.  Heavy particle dispersion in inhomogeneous, anisotropic, turbulent flows , 2000 .

[21]  P. E. Moore.  Propagation and suppression of gas and dust explosions , 1981 .

[22]  Ian M. Kennedy,et al.  Particle dispersion in a turbulent round jet , 1998 .

[23]  B. Oesterlé,et al.  On the dispersion of discrete particles moving in a turbulent shear flow , 2000 .

[24]  William A. Sirignano,et al.  Fluid Dynamics of Sprays—1992 Freeman Scholar Lecture , 1993 .

[25]  I. E. Barton,et al.  An experimental and numerical investigation into the dispersion of powder from a pipe , 2003 .

[26]  A. D. Gosman,et al.  The computation of compressible and incompressible recirculating flows by a non-iterative implicit scheme , 1986 .

[27]  Jose C. F. Pereira,et al.  Computation of dispersed turbulent liquid-particle flows impinging a centerbody using an improved lagrangian stochastic model , 1997 .

[28]  Himanshu Pokharna,et al.  The particle fluid model and using Lagrangian representation in two-phase flow modeling , 1997 .