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Article history:
Received 25 September 2013
Received in revised form 17 April 2014
Accepted 27 April 2014
Available online 27 May 2014
Keywords:
Solid uid coupling
DEMCFD
Lubrication
Non-linear particles contact
Agglomeration
a b s t r a c t
The study presented in this paper investigates the effects of uid lubrication on solid particles ow and
transport in slurries at high solids concentrations. Particleparticle and particlewall collisions inuence
the behavior of slurries constrained between two parallel walls thereby affecting solids transport and the
uid ow eld. As the concentration of the particles increases, collisions become more frequent compared to the dilute ow, and their effect on the ow eld cannot be neglected. Particularly, lubrication
from a thin uid layer formed between approaching particles acts as non-linear damper affecting particle
kinetic energy and post-collision behaviors. The Discrete Element Method coupled with Computational
Fluid Dynamics (DEMCFD), with a new user-dened contact model that accounts for particle lubrication
and as implemented in the commercially available two-dimensional Particle Flow Code (PFC2D), was used
to improve the understanding of the micro-mechanical behavior that contributes to particle clogging in a
channel. It was found that the balance of uid drag, related to the pressure drop in the channel and slurry
properties such as uid viscosity, particles volumetric concentration, particles size and channel size substantially contribute to the particle agglomeration even without considering gravity.
Published by Elsevier Ltd.
1. Introduction
Transport of solid particles mixed with uid in narrow pipes
and channels has been studied in the past within the scope of various industrial applications. Examples are the behavior of uidized
beds, sediment transport, proppant ow and transport in hydraulic
fracturing, and pipe conveyance of grains (Hu, 1996; Kajishima and
Takiguchi, 2002; Kobayashi et al., 2002; Li et al., 2013; Pan and
Banerjee, 1997; Tsuji, 2000; Tsuji et al., 1993; Xu and Yu, 1997;
Yu and Xu, 2003). Pipe conveyance of grains and uidized bed
behavior is associated mainly with gas ow, while proppant ow
and transport in hydraulic fractures, or mud ow, is associated
with viscous and dense Newtonian or non-Newtonian uids. Slurry
ow and transport in pipes exhibit a range of recognized ow
regimes which have already been classied in the literature. Examples include fully suspended ow with more or less evenly distributed particles over a pipes cross section, particles forming dunes,
stationary beds, and plug ow (Molerus, 1981). Parameters such
as ow stability, critical velocity, chocking velocity (Klinzing
et al., 1987), and saltation velocity (Hong et al., 1995) are used
for the prediction of the ow regimes in horizontal and vertical
pipes and channels (Fan and Zhu, 2005; Hewitt, 1978). The effects
144
145
@e~
v
qf
qf ~
v re~
v erp lr2 e~
v ~f b
@t
@e
re~
v 0
@t
~
f b b~
vs
~
v s ~u ~
v
1 e
~
b
1501 el 1:75qf dj
v s j;
d2 e2
b
v s jqf 1 e
4 j~
Cd
;
1:7
3
de
e < 0:8
e P 0:8
8
0:687
>
< 24 1 0:15Rep
;
Cd
Rep
>
:
0:44; Rep > 1000
Rep
j~
v s jqf ed
~
fb
4
~
f drag pr 3
3
1 e
where r is the particle radius. The particle motion in the uid is then
integrated over time according to the default PFC2D scheme, where
contact forces may be added. The uid-particle coupling is inactive
for rotational velocities which are not transferred from uid to
particles because the uid-induced force is always applied at the
particle center of mass. The rotational particle motion is only governed by mechanical particle interactions and contact friction. In
order to assure that the results were not dependent on simulation
or material properties, we kept the channel length relatively large
compared to the channel width, and we included only velocity
results after the ow stabilized. In the beginning of the simulations,
there is an unstable ow area at the entrance of the channel when
the uid velocity rises from zero until some constant value caused
by the pressure drop between channel entrance and exit. CFD mesh
size is taken as small as possible in order to enable the code to work,
Fig. 2. Illustration of the CFDDEM coupling in PFC2D for monodisperse 0.5 mm in diameter, spherical particles owing with a uid in a 2 mm wide channel.
146
Ft
6plr 2 v
a
10
where F(t) is the particle contact force, l is the uid dynamic viscosity, r is the particle radius, v is the relative velocity of two approaching particles, and a is the distance between particle surfaces. The
lubrication force is introduced to PFC2D for the normal component
of contact force as particles approach each other at small distance
using the apparent radius of the area around the particle for contact
activation (Fig. 3). In the PFC2D implementation, the same model is
used for the particleparticle and the particlewall collisions.
The apparent particle radius rap, which is 510% larger than the
real particle radius serves for contact detection. The lubrication
force acts upon contact when it is activated as dened in
Eqs. (11)(13) which represent the new particle contact law. The
elastic rebound depends on the overlap of two particles. If particles
are in contact, i.e. when the distance between particles centers, rij
is larger than 2rc, where rc is the is the real particle radius, then the
lubrication force is added to particle equation of motion. For this
contact logic to work properly, computational time step must be
sufciently small. The particle contact behavior evolution needs
to be modeled over at least several time steps. The lubrication force
magnitude depends both on the approaching velocity and the
distance between particle surfaces. During the time stepping, if
the particles are close enough that they overlap with their real
radii, then the elastic rebound and the friction are activated. The
contact force logic can be written here as:
r ij r i r j aij
11
F c 6plr 2c
v ij
xij
klub
v ij
r ij 2r c
12
Fig. 3. Scheme of the apparent (rap) and real (rc) radii and the approaching distance
rij.
F c k2r c r ij cv ij
13
where Fc is the contact force, aij is the overlap of the particles, rij is
the distance between centers of the particles that are in contact, rc is
the real particle radius, dcr is the critical distance between particles
centers at which the elastic contact behavior activates (dcr = 2rc), k
is the spring stiffness, c is the dashpot constant, vij is the relative
velocity of two contacting particles, m is the particle mass, l is
the uid dynamic viscosity, and klub is the lubrication constant.
The particle rebound can be elastic (only k) or it can have some
damping included (k and c), but this is only the behavior that occurs
upon the collision of the particles.
The tangential component of the particle contact force in this
model is simplied as for the dry collision. The slip behavior is
dened by the friction coefcient at the contact using the Coulomb
friction force. Joseph and Hunt (2004) concluded that tangential
component at the particle contact is similar to dry system, but with
a lowered friction coefcient due to the lubrication effects. However, for collisions of rough particles at increasing tangential Stokes
number, the friction coefcient rose to a value that approximates
the dry friction coefcient (Joseph and Hunt, 2004). The coefcient
of restitution for particlewall collision is used to validate the
lubrication model. In order to measure the coefcient of restitution, a particle is dropped in uid on a smooth horizontal wall from
an initial height (h1), and the rebound high (h2) that particle
reaches after impact is measured. The coefcient of restitution er
is dened as:
v 2 p
2gh2
er
v1
2gh1
s
h2
h1
14
where v2 is the velocity of particle after the impact with wall and v1
is the velocity of the particle before the impact with the horizontal
wall, and g is the gravitational acceleration. Yang and Hunt (2006)
investigated experimentally particleparticle immersed collision
behavior, and they concluded that the correlation between coefcient of restitution and Stokes number can also be applied to particlewall collision (Yang and Hunt, 2006). The singe-particle and
wall collision immersed Stokes number is dened as:
St
mv 1
6plr 2
15
147
Fig. 4. PFC results using the user-dened immersed contact model of wall and sand
particle (r = 0.3 mm) after theory developed by Davis et al. (1986).
Table 1
Particle and model properties.
Property
Symbol
Unit
Value
rc
rap
mm
mm
kg/m3
N/m2
mm
m
N/m2
N/m2
kg/m3
Pa s
s
0.25
0.32
2600
0.2
3 103
0
0.5
0.5
0.2
15 103
3 103
1000
0.0010.05
107
qp
fp
kp
c
b
L
fw
knw
ksw
qf
l
Dt
Dpnet 12lq
Dx
Lw3
16
Fig. 5. Parallel plate ow, where qi is the ow rate in each wing, q is the ow rate, v
is the average uid velocity, hf is the fracture height, and w is the fracture width.
148
Fig. 6. Pressure drop vs. average slip velocity for particles in 4 mm wide channel.
more uniform response while particle velocities show larger scatter and unpredictability. For higher particle concentrations, uid
viscosity and low pressure strongly enhance the slowing down of
particles.
Dynamic equilibrium of the phases is achieved when particles
and uid have the same velocity (Crowe et al., 2011) and the Stokes
149
Fig. 9. Pressure drop vs. average uid velocities in the 4 mm wide channel, cv is the
initial particle volumetric concentration.
Fig. 10. Pressure drop vs. average particles velocities in the 4 mm wide channel, cv
is the initial particle volumetric concentration.
Figs. 7ad and 8ad are re-grouped, and points of same uid viscosity over different particle initial concentrations are shown
together. Dashed lines are then created that represent a margin
around the group, and the internal points are removed from the
plot for better clarity. The aim of plotting data in this way is to
see if power-law relationship exists between resulting uid and
particle velocities and the channel pressure drop that causes slurry
motion along the channel as a function of constant uid viscosity
and initial particle concentration. The uid and particle velocities
uctuate from the power-law as uid viscosity increases. As a
result, inter-particle collisions dominate particle ow and transport and increase the slip velocity. Fluid velocities (Fig. 9) have
smaller sensitivities than particle velocities (Fig. 10) to the increase
of uid viscosity. Higher uid viscosities are related with large
scatter (Fig. 10) of particles velocities, which also indicates the
importance of uid lubrication directly on particle motion.
Figs. 11 and 12 show the cumulative plots of ow simulations
for a 2 mm wide channel. There is a consistency in pressure drop
150
Fig. 11. Pressure drop vs. average uid velocities in the 2 mm wide channel, cv is
the initial particle volumetric concentration.
Fig. 12. Pressure drop vs. average particles velocities in the 2 mm wide channel, cv
is the initial particle volumetric concentration.
for all the simulations for 4 mm and 2 mm wide channels. However, many simulations in 2 mm channel showed particle channel
clogging instead of steady ow, and we ended up with less data
points. For example, in uids with higher viscosities than water,
it was not possible to establish a consistent pattern for particle
ow and transport at the volumetric concentrations higher than
cv = 0.14. Therefore, instead of plotting only the margins the area
where the data points are (as in Figs. 9 and 10), all the data points
are shown in Figs. 11 and 12. In Fig. 11, the average uid velocity
curves do not have the same slopes at the different concentrations,
and their distances from each other are different for the low and
Fig. 13. Effect of pressure and uid viscosity on particle agglomeration in 4 mm channel.
151
Fig. 14. Average uid and particle velocities vs. the initial particle volumetric concentrations the 4 mm wide channel.
152
Fig. 15. Fluid and particles average velocities and theoretical uid velocity ratio in a 4 mm wide channel.
particle transport before large clumps have been formed and have
stopped the ow of the solids. To conclude, particle concentration
is not the only parameter that accounts for the decrease in uid
and solids velocity, but the lubrication and particles collisions
may prevail at certain conditions obstructing the ow and clogging
of the channel. The maximum packing parameter for solid particle
Fig. 16. Fluid and particles average velocities vs. particle volumetric concentrations in 2 mm wide channel.
Fig. 17. Fluid and particles average velocities and theoretical uid velocity ratio vs. particle volumetric concentrations in 2 mm wide channel.
153
154
Fig. 18. Fluid and particles velocities vs. uid dynamic viscosity in 4 mm wide channel.
systems before clogging occurs depends on the uid dynamic viscosity and the channel pressure drop (drag force), and might be
less than cv,max = 0.3 as observed in this simulations.
Fig. 15 shows the dependency of the average uid and particles
velocities from performed simulations, which were divided with
the theoretical value of the parallel plate velocity solution for the
viscous uid eld in the channel (Eq. (16)), vs. particle volumetric
concentrations. Because the velocities are here shown as divided
with the corresponding parallel plate solution of the uid ow
without the particles for each viscosity and pressure drop case,
the ow disturbances caused by the particles agglomerations are
easier to see. For example, when the particles form a clump while
owing in the channel, the uid velocity locally increases around
the clump due to narrowing of the available ow path. This effect
of agglomeration does not exist in water (l = 0.01 Pa s), but at the
higher viscosity uid l = 0.010 Pa s it is detected for the small pressure drop (Dp/L = 200 Pa/m), and for the medium pressure drop at
the Dp/L = 200 Pa/m and the cv = 0.39. For the l = 0.025 Pa s the
uid ow around clumps is more pronounced, and occurs already
at the Dp/L = 2000 Pa/m and the cv = 0.28, and for the Dp/
L = 10,000 Pa/m and the cv = 0.39. For example, in Fig. 15c uid
velocity seems higher with the increase of the particle volumetric
concentration at the Dp/L = 2000 Pa/m, but this only indicates that
uid was forced to ow through the narrower channel around the
particles clump. By comparing the plots at the left graph (uid
velocities) and the right graph (particles velocities), it can be seen
that when the uid velocity increases the particles velocity
decreases at the same time. The high uid viscosity (l = 0.050 Pa s)
shows an inconsistent particle ow and transport behavior with
respect to the particle concentrations.
Figs. 16 and 17 show the results of the study of the effect of the
particle concentrations on uid and the particle velocities in the
2 mm wide channel. Both plots, shown in Figs. 16 and 17, indicate
a decrease in velocities with the particle volumetric concentrations
155
Fig. 19. Particles ow and transport in viscous uids (l = 0.001 Pa s), w = 2 mm, cv = 0.56, DP/L = 10,000 N/m0 : (a) From the model with spring contact model, l = 0.001 Pa s.
(b) From the model with spring contact model, l = 0.01 Pa s. (c) From the model with spring contact model, l = 0.1 Pa s. (d) from the model with lubrication force,
l = 0.001 Pa s. (e) From the model with lubrication force, l = 0.01 Pa s.
increase. Again, as the uid dynamic viscosity increases, the lubrication effect on the particle collisions increases and some particle
agglomeration is present in the ow. There are a signicantly less
number of the successfully transported particles in the 2 mm wide
channel. It is observed that the clogging of channel occurs more
rapidly and suddenly as the ratio of channel width and particle size
decreases. Unlike in the 4 mm slot, the particle agglomerations in
2 mm slot quickly obstructed the ow without a prior warning.
In terms of the channel drop pressures, the lower pressures combined with the higher viscosities increased the occurrence of the
particles agglomeration and the uid ow around clumps.
4. Conclusions
3.3. Effect of uid viscosity on particle transport
Fig. 18 shows plots that clarify the effects of the uid dynamic
viscosity on particle and uid ow and transport. For clarity, the
results are grouped for different channel pressure drops on separate plots. An increase of the uid dynamic viscosity has a signicant importance on the uid and particles velocities at each
pressure level. However, the curves with the lower particles volumetric concentrations show more sensitivity to the viscosity
increase than the higher particles volumetric concentrations. Fluid
viscosity is a parameter in both the uid drag force and in the
lubrication force expressions. Therefore, it affects all the forces that
are responsible for the horizontal particle transport. Plots shown in
Fig. 18 indicate balanced results, namely for all the channel pressure drops increase in the uid viscosity causes decrease in the
uid and particles velocities.
3.4. Comparison with a DEMCFD model without lubrication force
Results presented in this paper show how the uid lubrication
force disturbs ow and transport of uid and solid particles slurry
in a narrow channel, causing particle agglomerations and channel
clogging. In order to present a critical evidence of lubrication force
importance, few samples of classical CFDDEM simulations are
given here and compared with the model with lubrication force.
In the classical DEMCFD code, particle collisions are modeled with
the spring and dashpot representing the behavior of a dry collision.
Fig. 19 shows simulation results in 2 mm wide channel, where the
initial volumetric concentration of particles is relatively high,
cv = 0.56. Fluid viscosities that were used are l = 0.001, 0.01 and
0.1 Pa s with the pressure drop in the channel DP/L = 10,000 Pa/m.
Fig. 19ac plots are snapshots from the classical DEMCFD simulations for three different uid viscosities, where (a) has
l = 0.001 Pa s, (b) has l = 0.01 Pa s and (c) has l = 0.1 Pa s. All three
simulations were successful, because the channel did not clog and
particles are transported in regular and stable assembly along the
channel. On the contrary, when lubrication force is introduced, in
This study investigated the effects of lubrication on particle collisions in viscous uid on solids transport in a narrow channel. The
contact lubrication theory developed by (Davis et al., 1986) was
incorporated in the DEMCFD computer program PFC2D as a
user-dened particle contact model. The improved DEMCFD
scheme revealed the effects of uid lubrication using a number
of simulations via parametric analyses. Particularly, dense phase
ows were characterized with frequent particle collisions that
obstruct solids transport along the channel. Two-dimensional discrete element analysis was conducted to better understand effect
of particles collisions. When particles approach each other in a viscous uid, a thin layer of uid between their surfaces dissipated
their kinetic energy. Particles slowed down, and in some cases
stayed adjacent to each other without rebound. This phenomenon
may have ultimately caused particles agglomeration and channel
clogging.
From the micro-mechanical perspective, the motion of an individual particle in uid was determined from forces that act on the
particle at each moment in time. More specically, the particle
trajectories were derived here from uid drag forces and particleparticle or particlewall collisions forces because only ow
without gravitational acceleration was modeled. Fluid drag exerted
forward motion of a particle toward the lower uid pressure
region. Particles collisions exhibited a non-linear behavior nature
that lead to particles rebound or clumping.
Results of the presented simulations indicated that, due to
increase non-linear particle collisions, pressure drops in a narrow
channel alone cannot be used to predict particle ow and transport. Agglomeration was more likely to occur at higher particle volumetric concentrations combined with lower pressures and
smaller uid drag. Particularly, the use of high viscosity uids
increased the effect of lubrication, and particles were transported
successfully only if there was enough uid drag available in the
system.
Comparing the results from 2 mm and 4 mm wide channels that
are 0.5 m long with uniform 0.5 mm diameter particles, it was
156
concluded that the width of the channel vs. particles diameter ratio
played a signicant role for particles transport. In uid with higher
viscosity, in the 2 mm channel, maximum packing or the maximum particle volumetric concentration was signicantly lower
(cv,max = 0.14) than in the 4 mm channel, where no clogging was
observed at maximum simulated concentrations of (cv,max = 0.39).
When particles started to agglomerate in the 2 mm channel,
they caused abrupt and sudden channel clogging. As a result, most
of the analysis with lower pressure drop rates or higher uid
dynamic viscosities combined with increased particles volumetric
concentrations were stopped once clogging occurred.
Acknowledgments
Financial support provided by the U.S. Department of Energy
under DOE Grant No. DE-FE0002760 is gratefully acknowledged.
The opinions expressed in this paper are those of the authors and
not the DOE.
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