Direct numerical simulation of bidisperse inertial particles settling in turbulent channel flow

The behavior of settling velocity and clustering of bidisperse inertial particles in a turbulent channel flow is investigated through direct numerical simulation. The particle-laden planar channel flow has a friction Reynolds number at Reτ = 180. Eulerian–Lagrangian method is used to study the dynamic properties of bidisperse and monodisperse inertial particles with 16 different simulation sets, which are distinguished by Stokes numbers ranging from St+ = 1.31 to 52.58 and particle number ratio from 1:1 to 1:8. Momentum exchange between fluid and particle phases is considered in the simulation as the chosen initial volume fraction at 5 × 10−5 is in the two-way coupling regime. The gravity is set at the direction normal to both the wall normal direction and the streamwise direction. We observe that in the bidisperse cases the turbophoresis effect of inertial particles with the smaller diameter is significant even though it is very weak in the corresponding monodisperse cases. We use radial distribution function (RDF) to investigate the degree of clustering and turbophoresis. The results indicate that RDF is larger in the bidisperse cases for both large and small particles and it is greatly affected by the bulk particle number ratio and the Stokes number ratio. Unlike clustering, the terminal settling velocities of inertial particles in the bidisperse cases are affected by the final volume fraction at the dynamic equilibrium state. When their final volume fractions are lower than those in the corresponding monodisperse cases, the settling velocity of either particle becomes reduced from the monodisperse value. We also investigate the relationship between settling velocity and vortex strength. The results show that the preferential sweeping mechanism is strengthened with Stokes number decreasing and the mechanism can be quantified by the slope of the curve of settling velocity variation with vortex strength.