Viscous flow analysis of advanced particle separators

A fully viscous particulated flow analysis for inertial particle separators (IPS) is presented. It is based on three main elements 1) a full Navier-Stokes solver on generalized curvilinear coordinates to map the viscous compressible flow in the IPS; 2) a grid system that is ideally suitable for the IPS split flow; and 3) a particle trajectory scheme that accounts for wall boundaries and gas effects on the particle motion. This procedure was verified by comparing the predicted results with experimental data obtained from a 5-Ib/s inlet particle separator. The good agreement between data and predictions indicates that such a procedure is important in the development process of future high-performance inlet particle separators.