Simulation and Comparison of Particle Injection in an Indoor Environment Using the Species Transport and Discrete Phase Models

In simulating fluid/solid-particle multiphase -flows, various methods are available. One approach is the combined Euler-Lagrange method, which simulates the fluid phase flow in the Eulerian framework and the discrete phase (particle) motion in the Lagrangian framework simultaneously. The Lagrangian approach, where particle motion is determined by the current state of the fluid phase flow, is also called the discrete phase model (DPM), in the context of numerical flow simulation. In this method, the influence of the particle motions on the fluid flow can be included (two-way interactions) but are more commonly excluded (one-way interactions, when the discrete phase concentration is dilute. The other approach is to treat the particle number concentration as a continuous species, a necessarily passive quantity determined by the fluid flow, with no influences from the particles on the fluid flow (one-way interactions only), except to the extent the discrete phase “continuum” alters the overall fluid properties, such as density. In this paper, we compare these two methods with experimental data for an indoor environmental chamber. The effects of injection particle numbers and the related boundary conditions are investigated. In the Euler-Lagrange interaction or DPM model for incompressible flow, the Eulerian continuous phase is governed by the Reynolds-averaged N-S (RANS) equations. The motions of particles are governed by Newton’s second law. The effects of particle motions are communicated to the continuous phase through a force term in the RANS equations. The second formulation is a pure Eulerian type, where only the particle-number concentration is addressed, rather than the motion of each individual particle. The fluid flow is governed by the same RANS equations without the particle force term. The particle-number concentration is simulated by a species transport equation. Comparisons among the models and with experimental and literature data are presented. Particularly, results with different numbers of released particles in the DPM will be investigated.