A Modelling Study of Evolving Particle-laden Turbulent Pipe-flow

An Eulerian turbulent two phase flow model using kinetic theory of granular flows for the particle phase was developed in order to study evolving upward turbulent gas particle flows in a pipe. The model takes the feedback of the particles into account and its results agree well with experiments. Simulations show that the pipe length required for particle laden turbulent flow to become fully developed is up to five times longer than an unladen flow. To increase the understanding of the dependence of the development length on particle diameter a simple model for the expected development length was derived. It shows that the development length becomes shorter for increasing particle diameters, which agrees with simulations up to a particle diameter of 100 μm. Thereafter the development length becomes longer again for increasing particle diameters because larger particles need a longer time to adjust to the velocity of the carrier phase.