Numerical Simulation of Natural Convection in Particle Suspensions

Abstract

The purpose of the paper is to investigate two layer convection driven by settling of particles and temperature difference using a continuum model of suspensions. A two-dimensional numerical simulation method for polydisperse suspensions is proposed. Numerical results of settling velocity of particles using polydisperse settling model are in good agreement with experimental results. The FCT (flux-correctedtransport) procedure overcomes the problem of false oscillations of concentration field. The calculated distributions of the vertical and horizontal velocity were compared with the experimental results. The numerical results of velocity, temperature and interface profiles agreed quantitatively well in early stages and qualitatively well in later stages with our experimental results. The development and vanishing of two-layer convection cells are clarified.