Numerical Study on the Migration of Two Spheres in Upward Pipe Flow Available to Purchase

Migration of particles in pipe flow is commonly seen in offshore engineering, such as vertical transport of ores in deep sea mining. As the basis of the investigation on fluid-particle two-phase flow, the interaction of two spheres in upward pipe flow is studied by direct numerical simulations in this paper. The pipe flow is set as Poiseuille flow; the Reynolds number is no more than 1250. The dynamic responses of the spheres and the flow pattern are analyzed at different flow velocity. When compared to the sedimentation of two spheres in quiescent flow, the trailing sphere in Poiseuille flow will never surpass the leading one in Poiseuille flow. As the flow velocity increases in the pipe, the spheres are easier to separate after collision. When the flow velocity exceeds a critical value, the spheres will never collide.