Modeling of non-spherical particle flows: Movement and orientation behavior

The fast advancement of existing and new functional material systems, where particulate morphology differs from traditional systems (e.g. fibers, flakes,), demands technical know-how on the processing of non-spherical particles in liquid media. There are few to no technical relevant tools available for the prediction of such particulate systems, specifically when particle-particle interactions and particle orientation are relevant, making development of such processes time consuming and expensive. Therefore, a tool is needed to support process design and further understand of non-spherical systems. On this work, a novel approach for the calculation of drag forces and drag induced torques for non-spherical particles in the context of CFD-DEM coupling is presented. The approach is inspired by Stokesian Dynamics for the computation of drag forces and torques when using the multi-sphere method for the representation of non-spherical particles.