Industrial & Engineering Chemistry Research, Vol.51, No.30, 10265-10273, 2012
Numerical Investigation of Interaction between Spheroid Particles in Tandem Arrangement at Moderate Reynolds Numbers
In this work, effects of the particle aspect ratio (e), the particle Reynolds number (Re), and the interparticle distance (S) on the flow and drag phenomena of Newtonian fluid flow past a series of three spheroid particles are numerically investigated. The governing conservation equations of mass and momentum are solved using commercial software based on computational fluid dynamics. The numerical solver is benchmarked by comparing present results with those available in the literature for the case of tandem spherical particles (e = 1). Further, extensive new results are obtained over the following range of conditions: 1 <= Re <= 100, 0.25 <= e <= 2.5, and 2 <= S <= 6. The recirculation wake interactions are found to be more significant for prolate particles (e > 1) than for spheres (e = 1) followed by oblate spheroids (e < 1). Regardless of values of Re, e, and S, the drag coefficients of leading particles are very close to those of unbounded isolated particles. The drag coefficients of middle and trailing particles are significantly smaller than those of leading particles. For all values of the aspect ratio and the particle Reynolds number, as the value of the interparticle distance increases, the drag coefficients of each individual particle increases. Furthermore, the ratio between the average drag coefficient of tandem particles to the total drag coefficient of single unconfined particles decreases with increasing Reynolds number and/or increasing aspect ratio and/or decreasing interparticle distance.