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Engineering systems operating under particle-laden turbulent flow regimes, such as slurry pumps, are prone to erosive wear, where the specific conditions of particle impingement are crucial for determining the wear rate of the eroding surface and thus its relevance for the mechanical or hydraulic system. However, the near-wall interactions under turbulent flows impose a challenge for the formulation and validation of experimental and numerical models that describe the particle's trajectories close to the surface. This work analyzes the statistics of particle impacts obtained from a Large-Eddy Simulation (LES) with the Wall-Adapting Local Eddy-Viscosity (WALE) model of the flow and its consistency with experimental data on the statistical distributions of particle impact angle and impact direction determined in a slurry pot configuration. The resulting distributions of impact angle, impact direction, and particle velocity derived from the implemented CFD formulation produced characteristic values similar to those derived from experimental data. The LES-WALE approach used in this work offers shorter computational times and is shown valid by comparative analysis with direct simulation. The model's applicability and prospective dynamic simulation of practical engineering cases are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An experimental analysis of the dynamics of avalanches for different stages of development and turbulent flow conditions is introduced. Experiments were conducted in a laboratory flume using clear-water conditions and a video camera placed within an acrylic cylinder. The results of a proper orthogonal decomposition of the pre-processed image sequences highlighted the existence of two types of sand avalanches: Type I corresponding to a narrow and vertically long-advancing slide, and Type II characterized by an elongated and short-advancing pattern. Temporally speaking, sand avalanches were triggered aperiodically, resembling the behaviour of the horseshoe vortex system. The frequency of occurrence of avalanches decreased with time, while the estimated volume of mobilized sand increased in the same period. The sand slide magnitudes and associated inter-avalanche time were Log-Pearson 3 distributed. Sand avalanches are an important scour mechanism, which depending on the flow intensity contribute to about 40% to 60% of the scoured volume. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Jet-mixing and residence time in a rectangular water storage tank with a constant water level are investigated using the tools of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD). A set of Unsteady Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (URANS) equations using a realisablek-ε model for different inlet configurations has been used. Numerical simulations were validated by means of experimental measurements. A saline inflow was simulated and the computed salinity in the outflow was compared with the measured values, with the aim of improving the tank performance based only on simple modifications of the inlet position and inflow rate. The results show that the URANS technique is able to adequately capture the experimental dilution curve measured at the outlet of the tank. The residence time is mainly influenced by advective transport. Modifications of the horizontal angle and Reynolds number of the inflow jet produce changes in the mixing characteristics when different performance indexes are compared. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The identification of the spatial characteristics and the shedding frequencies of coherent structures in shallow flows usually involves the use of sophisticated equipment for velocity measurements such as laser Doppler anemometry or particle image velocimetry. In this work, a simple and low-cost alternative for the quantitative characterization of quasi two-dimensional shallow coherent structures is presented. The technique is based on the image pre-processing of flow visualizations and post-processing by means of the proper orthogonal decomposition. As an illustration of the method, the analysis of a shallow flow in the wake of a cylinder with a vortex-street pattern is presented. The method is able to discriminate concentration patches attached to the vortices and their advection, providing frequencies in excellent agreement with a previous study. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]