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We report the decoupled effects of inertial and viscous forces on particle focusing, the stability of particles, and particle trajectories to reach equilibrium position in an extended elasto inertial pressure driven flow, in a circular micro-capillary. We report numerically and experimentally for the first time, the existence of multiple stable equilibrium positions in the EEI regime, which was unobserved for flows previously studied at lower Reynolds number viscoelastic flows., QC 20200617

The authors study the condensational growth of cloud droplets in homogeneous isotropic turbulence by means of a large-eddy simulation (LES) approach. The authors investigate the role of a mean updraft velocity and of the chemical composition of the cloud condensation nuclei (CCN) on droplet growth. The results show that a mean constant updraft velocity superimposed onto a turbulent field reduces the broadening of the droplet size spectra induced by the turbulent fluctuations alone. Extending the authors' previous results regarding stochastic condensation, the authors introduce a new theoretical estimation of the droplet size spectrum broadening that accounts for this updraft velocity effect. A similar reduction of the spectra broadening is observed when the droplets reach their critical size, which depends on the chemical composition of CCN. The analysis of the square of the droplet radius distribution, proportional to the droplet surface, shows that for large particles the distribution is purely Gaussian, while it becomes strongly non-Gaussian for smaller particles, with the left tail characterized by a peak around the haze activation radius. This kind of distribution can significantly affect the later stages of the droplet growth involving turbulent collisions, since the collision probability kernel depends on the droplet size, implying the need for new specific closure models to capture this effect., QC 20180326

We report experimental observations of turbulent flow with spherical particles in a square duct. Three particle sizes, namely 2H/d(p) = 40, 16 and 9 (2H being the duct full height and d(p) being the particle diameter), are investigated. The particles are nearly neutrally buoyant with a density ratio of 1.0035 and 1.01 with respect to the suspending fluid. Refractive index matched-particle image velocimetry (RIM-PIV) is used for fluid velocity measurement even at the highest particle volume fraction (20 %) and particle tracking velocimetry (PTV) for the particle velocity statistics for the flows seeded with particles of the two largest sizes, whereas only pressure measurements are reported for the smallest particles. Settling effects are seen at the lowest bulk Reynolds number R-e2H approximate to 10 000, whereas, at the highest R-e2H approximate to 27 000, particles are in almost full suspension. The friction factor of the suspensions is found to be significantly larger than that of single-phase duct flow at the lower R-e2H investigated; however, the difference decreases when increasing the flow rate and the total drag approaches the values of the single-phase flow at the higher Reynolds number considered, R-e2H = 27 000. The pressure drop is found to decrease with the particle diameter for volume fractions lower than (sic) = 10% for nearly all R-e2H investigated. However, at the highest volume fraction (sic) = 20 %, we report a peculiar non-monotonic behaviour: the pressure drop first decreases and then increases with increasing particle size. The decrease of the turbulent drag with particle size at the lowest volume fractions is related to an attenuation of the turbulence. The drag increase for the two largest particle sizes at (sic) = 20 %, however, occurs despite this large reduction of the turbulent stresses, and it is therefore due to significant particle-induced stresses. At the lowest Reynolds number, the particles reside mostly in the bottom half of the duc, QC 20211207

The effect of the variations of the permeability tensor on the close-to-the-wall behaviour of a turbulent channel flow bounded by porous walls is explored using a set of direct numerical simulations. It is found that the total drag can be either reduced or increased by more than 20% by adjusting the permeability directional properties. Drag reduction is achieved for the case of materials with permeability in the vertical direction lower than the one in the wall-parallel planes. This configuration limits the wall-normal velocity at the interface while promoting an increase of the tangential slip velocity leading to an almost 'one-component' turbulence where the low- and high-speed streak coherence is strongly enhanced. On the other hand, strong drag increase is found when high wall-normal and low wall-parallel permeabilities are prescribed. In this condition, the enhancement of the wall-normal fluctuations due to the reduced wall-blocking effect triggers the onset of structures which are strongly correlated in the spanwise direction, a phenomenon observed by other authors in flows over isotropic porous layers or over ribletted walls with large protrusion heights. The use of anisotropic porous walls for drag reduction is particularly attractive since equal gains can be achieved at different Reynolds numbers by rescaling the magnitude of the permeability only., QC 20180403

We study the dynamics of a flexible fiber freely moving in a three-dimensional fully developed turbulent field and present a phenomenological theory to describe the interaction between the fiber elasticity and the turbulent flow. This theory leads to the identification of two distinct regimes of flapping, which we validate against direct numerical simulations fully resolving the fiber dynamics. The main result of our analysis is the identification of a flapping regime where the fiber, despite its elasticity, is slaved to the turbulent fluctuations. In this regime the fiber can be used to measure two-point statistical observables of turbulence, including scaling exponents of velocity structure functions, the sign of the energy cascade and the energy flux of turbulence, as well as the characteristic times of the eddies within the inertial range of scales. Our results are expected to have a deep impact on the experimental turbulence research as a new way, accurate and efficient, to measure two-point, and more generally multipoint, statistics of turbulence., QC 20180809

Rayleigh-Taylor (RT) fluid turbulence through a bed of rigid, finite-size spheres is investigated by means of high-resolution direct numerical simulations, fully coupling the fluid and the solid phase via a state-of-the-art immersed boundary method. The porous character of the medium reveals a totally different physics for the mixing process when compared to the well-known phenomenology of classical RT mixing. For sufficiently small porosity, the growth rate of the mixing layer is linear in time (instead of quadratical) and the velocity fluctuations tend to saturate to a constant value (instead of linearly growing). We propose an effective continuum model to fully explain these results where porosity originated by the finite-size spheres is parametrized by a friction coefficient., QC 20190625

We study turbulent channel flows of monodisperse and polydisperse suspensions of finite-size spheres by means of Direct Numerical Simulations using an immersed boundary method to account for the dispersed phase. Suspensions with 3 different Gaussian distributions of particle radii are considered (i.e. 3 different standard deviations). The distributions are centered on the reference particle radius of the monodisperse suspension. In the most extreme case, the radius of the largest particles is 4 times that of the smaller particles. We consider two different solid volume fractions, 2% and 10%. We find that for all polydisperse cases, both fluid and particles statistics are not substantially altered with respect to those of the monodisperse case. Mean streamwise fluid and particle velocity profiles are almost perfectly overlapping. Slightly larger differences are found for particle velocity fluctuations. These increase close to the wall and decrease towards the centerline as the standard deviation of the distribution is increased. Hence, the behavior of the suspension is mostly governed by excluded volume effects regardless of particle size distribution (at least for the radii here studied). Due to turbulent mixing, particles are uniformly distributed across the channel. However, smaller particles can penetrate more into the viscous and buffer layer and velocity fluctuations are therein altered. Non trivial results are presented for particle-pair statistics., QC 20171116

Aiming for the simulation of colloidal droplets in microfluidic devices, we present here a numerical method for two-fluid systems subject to surface tension and depletion forces among the suspended droplets. The algorithm is based on an efficient solver for the incompressible two-phase Navier–Stokes equations, and uses a mass-conserving level set method to capture the fluid interface. The four novel ingredients proposed here are, firstly, an interface-correction level set (ICLS) method; global mass conservation is achieved by performing an additional advection near the interface, with a correction velocity obtained by locally solving an algebraic equation, which is easy to implement in both 2D and 3D. Secondly, we report a second-order accurate geometric estimation of the curvature at the interface and, thirdly, the combination of the ghost fluid method with the fast pressure-correction approach enabling an accurate and fast computation even for large density contrasts. Finally, we derive a hydrodynamic model for the interaction forces induced by depletion of surfactant micelles and combine it with a multiple level set approach to study short-range interactions among droplets in the presence of attracting forces., QC 20171201

QC 20181213

QC 20211207

We study the settling of rigid oblates in a quiescent fluid using interface-resolved direct numerical simulations. In particular, an immersed boundary method is used to account for the dispersed solid phase together with lubrication correction and collision models to account for short-range particle-particle interactions. We consider semi-dilute suspensions of oblate particles with aspect ratio AR = 1/3 and solid volume fractions (Phi = 0.5-10%. The solid-to-fluid density ratio R = 1.02 and the Galileo number (i.e. the ratio between buoyancy and viscous forces) based on the diameter of a sphere with equivalent volume Ga = 60. With this choice of parameters, an isolated oblate falls vertically with a steady wake with its broad side perpendicular to the gravity direction. At this Ga, the mean settling speed of spheres is a decreasing function of the volume Phi and is always smaller than the terminal velocity of the isolated particle, V-t. On the contrary, in dilute suspensions of oblate particles (with Phi <= 1 %), the mean settling speed is approximately 33 % larger than V-t. At higher concentrations, the mean settling speed decreases becoming smaller than the terminal velocity V-t between (Phi = 5 % and 10%. The increase of the mean settling speed is due to the formation of particle clusters that for Phi = 0.5-1 % appear as columnar-like structures. From the pair distribution function we observe that it is most probable to find particle pairs almost vertically aligned. However, the pair distribution function is non-negligible all around the reference particle indicating that there is a substantial amount of clustering at radial distances between 2 and 6c (with c the polar radius of the oblate). Above Phi = 5 %, the hindrance becomes the dominant effect, and the mean settling speed decreases below V-t. As the particle concentration increases, the mean particle orientation changes and the mean pitch angle (the angle between the particle axis of symmetry and gravity, Not duplicate with DiVA 1157357QC 20180731

QC 20181213

Subglacial discharges have been observed to generate buoyant plumes along the ice face of Greenland tidewater glaciers. These plumes have been traditionally modeled using classical plume theory, and their characteristic parameters (e.g., velocity) are employed in the widely used three-equation melt parameterization. However, the applicability of plume theory for three-dimensional turbulent wall plumes is questionable because of the complex near-wall plume dynamics. In this study, corrections to the classical plume theory are introduced to account for the presence of a wall. In particular, the drag and entrainment coefficients are quantified for a three-dimensional turbulent wall plume using data from direct numerical simulations. The drag coefficient is found to be an order of magnitude larger than that for a boundary layer flow over a flat plate at a similar Reynolds number. This result suggests a significant increase in the melting estimates by the current parameterization. However, the volume flux in a wall plume is found to be one-half that of a conical plume that has 2 times the buoyancy flux. This finding suggests that the total entrainment (per unit area) of ambient water is the same and that the plume scalar characteristics (i.e., temperature and salinity) can be predicted reasonably well using classical plume theory., QC 20211208

We study the settling of finite-size rigid spheres in quiescent fluid and in sustained homogeneous isotropic turbulence (HIT) by direct numerical simulations using an immersed boundary method to account for the dispersed solid phase. We consider semi-dilute and dense suspensions of rigid spheres with solid volume fractions ϕ= 0.5 - 10 % , solid-to-fluid density ratio R= 1.02 , and Galileo number (i.e., the ratio between buoyancy and viscous forces) Ga= 145. In HIT, the nominal Reynolds number based on the Taylor microscale is Re λ ≃ 90 , and the ratio between the particle diameter and the nominal Kolmogorov scale is (2 a) / η≃ 12 (being a the particle radius). We find that in HIT the mean settling speed is less than that in quiescent fluid for all ϕ. For ϕ= 0.5 % , the mean settling speed in HIT is 8 % less than in quiescent fluid. However, by increasing the volume fraction the difference in the mean settling speed between quiescent fluid and HIT cases reduces, being only 1.7 % for ϕ= 10 %. Indeed, while at low ϕ the settling speed is strongly altered by the interaction with turbulence, at large ϕ this is mainly determined by the (strong) hindering effect. This is similar in quiescent fluid and in HIT, leading to similar mean settling speeds. On the contrary, particle angular velocities are always found to increase with ϕ. These are enhanced by the interaction with turbulence, especially at low ϕ. In HIT, the correlations of particle lateral velocity fluctuations oscillate around zero before decorrelating completely. The time period of the oscillation seems proportional to the ratio between the integral lengthscale of turbulence and the particle characteristic terminal velocity. Regarding the mean square particle displacement, we find that it is strongly enhanced by turbulence in the direction perpendicular to gravity, even at the largest ϕ. Finally, we investigate the collision statistics for all cases and find the interesting result that the collision frequency is, QC 20190304

We consider suspensions of deformable particles in a Newtonian fluid by means of fully Eulerian numerical simulations with a one-continuum formulation. We study the rheology of the visco-elastic suspension in plane Couette flow in the limit of vanishing inertia and examine the dependency of the effective viscosity mu on the solid volume-fraction Phi, the capillary number Ca, and the solid to fluid viscosity ratio K. The suspension viscosity decreases with deformation and applied shear (shear-thinning) while still increasing with volume fraction. We show that mu collapses to an universal function, mu(Phi(e)), with an effective volume fraction Phi(e), lower than the nominal one owing to the particle deformation. This universal function is well described by the Eilers fit, which well approximate the rheology of suspension of rigid spheres at all O. We provide a closure for the effective volume fraction Phi(e) as function of volume fraction Phi and capillary number Ca and demonstrate it also applies to data in literature for suspensions of capsules and red-blood cells. In addition, we show that the normal stress differences exhibit a non-linear behavior, with a similar trend as in polymer and filament suspensions. The total stress budgets reveals that the particle-induced stress contribution increases with the volume fraction Phi and decreases with deformability., QC 20190117

We investigate the elastoviscoplastic flow through porous media by numerical simulations. We solve the Navier–Stokes equations combined with the elastoviscoplastic model proposed by Saramito for the stress tensor evolution [1]. In this model, the material behaves as a viscoelastic solid when unyielded, and as a viscoelastic Oldroyd-B fluid for stresses higher than the yield stress. The porous media is made of a symmetric array of cylinders, and we solve the flow in one periodic cell. We find that the solution is time-dependent even at low Reynolds numbers as we observe oscillations in time of the unyielded region especially at high Bingham numbers. The volume of the unyielded region slightly decreases with the Reynolds number and strongly increases with the Bingham number; up to 70% of the total volume is unyielded for the highest Bingham numbers considered here. The flow is mainly shear dominated in the yielded region, while shear and elongational flow are equally distributed in the unyielded region. We compute the relation between the pressure drop and the flow rate in the porous medium and present an empirical closure as function of the Bingham and Reynolds numbers. The apparent permeability, normalized with the case of Newtonian fluids, is shown to be greater than 1 at low Bingham numbers, corresponding to lower pressure drops due to the flow elasticity, and smaller than 1 for high Bingham numbers, indicating larger dissipation in the flow owing to the presence of the yielded regions. Finally we investigate the effect of the Weissenberg number on the distribution of the unyielded regions and on the pressure gradient., QC 20180518

We study heat transfer in plane Couette flow laden with rigid spherical particles by means of direct numerical simulations. In the simulations we use a direct-forcing immersed boundary method to account for the dispersed phase together with a volume-of-fluid approach to solve the temperature field inside and outside the particles. We focus on the variation of the heat transfer with the particle Reynolds number, total volume fraction (number of particles) and the ratio between the particle and fluid thermal diffusivity, quantified in terms of an effective suspension diffusivity. We show that, when inertia at the particle scale is negligible, the heat transfer increases with respect to the unladen case following an empirical correlation recently proposed in the literature. In addition, an average composite diffusivity can be used to approximate the effective diffusivity of the suspension in the inertialess regime when varying the molecular diffusion in the two phases. At finite particle inertia, however, the heat transfer increase is significantly larger, smoothly saturating at higher volume fractions. By phase-ensemble-averaging we identify the different mechanisms contributing to the total heat transfer and show that the increase of the effective conductivity observed at finite inertia is due to the increase of the transport associated with fluid and particle velocity. We also show that the contribution of the heat conduction in the solid phase to the total wall-normal heat flux reduces when increasing the particle Reynolds number, so that particles of low thermal diffusivity weakly alter the total heat flux in the suspension at finite particle Reynolds numbers. On the other hand, a higher particle thermal diffusivity significantly increases the total heat transfer., QC 20171207

Finite-size particles modulate wall-bounded turbulence, leading, for the case of spherical particles, to increased drag also owing to the formation of a particle wall layer. Here, we study the effect of particle shape on the turbulence in suspensions of spheroidal particles at volume fraction phi = 10 % and show how the near-wall particle dynamics deeply changes with the particle aspect ratio and how this affects the global suspension behaviour. Direct numerical simulations are performed using a direct-forcing immersed boundary method to account for the dispersed phase, combined with a soft-sphere collision model and lubrication corrections for short-range particle-particle and particle-wall interactions. The turbulence reduces with the aspect ratio of oblate particles, leading to drag reduction with respect to the single-phase flow for particles with aspect ratio AR <= 1/3, when the significant reduction in Reynolds shear stress is more than the compensation by the additional stresses, induced by the solid phase. Oblate particles are found to avoid the region close to the wall, travelling parallel to it with small angular velocities, while preferentially sampling high-speed fluid in the wall region. Prolate particles also tend to orient parallel to the wall and avoid its vicinity. Their reluctance to rotate around the spanwise axis reduces the wall-normal velocity fluctuation of the flow and therefore the turbulence Reynolds stress, similar to oblates; however, they undergo rotations in wall-parallel planes which increase the additional solid stresses due to their relatively larger angular velocities compared to the oblates. These larger additional stresses compensate for the reduction in turbulence activity and lead to a wall drag similar to that of single-phase flows. Spheres on the other hand, form a layer close to the wall with large angular velocities in the spanwise direction, which increases the turbulence activity in addition to exerting the largest soli, QC 20181211

We study the turbulent square duct flow of dense suspensions of neutrally buoyant spherical particles. Direct numerical simulations (DNS) are performed in the range of volume fractions phi = 0-0.2, using the immersed boundary method (IBM) to account for the dispersed phase. Based on the hydraulic diameter a Reynolds number of 5600 is considered. We observe that for phi = 0.05 and 0.1, particles preferentially accumulate on the corner bisectors, close to the corners, as also observed for laminar square duct flows of the same duct-to-particle size ratio. At the highest volume fraction, particles preferentially accumulate in the core region. For plane channel flows, in the absence of lateral confinement, particles are found instead to be uniformly distributed across the channel. The intensity of the cross-stream secondary flows increases (with respect to the unladen case) with the volume fraction up to phi = 0.1, as a consequence of the high concentration of particles along the corner bisector. For phi = 0.2 the turbulence activity is reduced and the intensity of the secondary flows reduces to below that of the unladen case. The friction Reynolds number increases with phi in dilute conditions, as observed for channel flows. However, for phi = 0.2 the mean friction Reynolds number is similar to that for phi = 0.1. By performing the turbulent kinetic energy budget, we see that the turbulence production is enhanced up to phi = 0.1, while for phi = 0.2 the production decreases below the values for phi = 0.05. On the other hand, the dissipation and the transport monotonically increase with phi The interphase interaction term also contributes positively to the turbulent kinetic energy budget and increases monotonically with phi, in a similar way as the mean transport. Finally, we show that particles move on average faster than the fluid. However, there are regions close to the walls and at the corners where they lag behind it. In particular, for phi = 0.05, 0.1, the slip vel, Not duplicate with DiVA 1157360QC 20180803

We present numerical simulations of laminar and turbulent channel flow of an elastoviscoplastic fluid. The non-Newtonian flow is simulated by solving the full incompressible Navier-Stokes equations coupled with the evolution equation for the elastoviscoplastic stress tensor. The laminar simulations are carried out for a wide range of Reynolds numbers, Bingham numbers and ratios of the fluid and total viscosity, while the turbulent flow simulations are performed at a fixed bulk Reynolds number equal to 2800 and weak elasticity. We show that in the laminar flow regime the friction factor increases monotonically with the Bingham number (yield stress) and decreases with the viscosity ratio, while in the turbulent regime the friction factor is almost independent of the viscosity ratio and decreases with the Bingham number, until the flow eventually returns to a fully laminar condition for large enough yield stresses. Three main regimes are found in the turbulent case, depending on the Bingham number: for low values, the friction Reynolds number and the turbulent flow statistics only slightly differ from those of a Newtonian fluid; for intermediate values of the Bingham number, the fluctuations increase and the inertial equilibrium range is lost. Finally, for higher values the flow completely laminarizes. These different behaviours are associated with a progressive increases of the volume where the fluid is not yielded, growing from the centreline towards the walls as the Bingham number increases. The unyielded region interacts with the near-wall structures, forming preferentially above the high-speed streaks. In particular, the near-wall streaks and the associated quasi-streamwise vortices are strongly enhanced in an highly elastoviscoplastic fluid and the flow becomes more correlated in the streamwise direction., QC 20180914

A cloud is a complex multiphase system constituted by a huge number of different substances such as water droplets, ice droplets, water vapor, organic vapors, air., QC 20180515

To study the dynamics of particles in turbulence when their sizes are comparable to the smallest eddies in the flow, the Kolmogorov length scale, efficient and accurate numerical models for the particle-fluid interaction are still missing. Therefore, we here extend the treatment of the particle feedback on the fluid based on the volume-averaged fluid equations (VA simulation) in the previous study of the present authors, by estimating the fluid force correlated with the disturbed flow. We validate the model against interface-resolved simulations using the immersed-boundary method. Simulations of single particles show that the history effect is well captured by the present estimation method based on the disturbed flow. Similarly, the simulation of the flow around a rotating particle demonstrates that the lift force is also well captured by the proposed method. We also consider the interaction between non-negligible size particles and an array of Taylor–Green vortices. For density ratios ρd /ρc ≥ 10, the results show that the particle motion captured by the VA approach is closer to that of the fully-resolved simulations than that obtained with a traditional two-way coupling simulation. The flow disturbance is also well represented by the VA simulation. In particular, it is found that history effects enhance the curvature of the trajectory in vortices and this enhancement increases with the particle size. Furthermore, the flow field generated by a neighboring particle at distances of around ten particle diameters significantly influences particle trajectories. The computational cost of the VA simulation proposed here is considerably lower than that of the interface-resolved simulation., QC 20180517

We study suspensions of deformable (viscoelastic) spheres in a Newtonian solvent in planeCouette geometry, by means of direct numerical simulations. We find that in the limit of vanishing inertia, the effective viscosity mu of the suspension increases as the volume fraction occupied by the spheres Phi increases and decreases as the elastic modulus of the spheres G decreases; the function mu(Phi,G) collapses to a universal function mu(Phi(e)) with a reduced effective volume fraction Phi(e)(Phi,G). Remarkably, the function mu(Phi(e)) is the well- known Eilers fit that describes the rheology of suspension of rigid spheres at all Phi. Our results suggest different ways to interpret the macrorheology of blood.