Computer simulation of airflow around transfer chutes via linked discrete element method - computational fluid dynamics approach

A technique to simulate airflow around transfer chutes that involves linking Discrete Element Method (DEM) commercial package Rocky and Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) commercial package ANSYS Fluent is proposed. The flow of particles is first calculated in the DEM domain; after that continuum parameters of this flow (porosity, mean particle size and cell-averaged particles velocities) are calculated and used as input into ANSYS Fluent CFD package for the solution of the airflow. This solution is carried out using a single-phase moving porosity approach with User Defined Functions (UDF) for porosity and particle-based momentum terms in Fluent based on phenomenological interaction laws. The comparison against experimental results for a laboratory-scale transfer chute demonstrates a good match between experimental and computational data. Several turbulence models and particle-gas interaction laws have been tested and it was concluded that for this problem the choice of interaction laws and turbulence models does not affect the results of the simulation to any significant degree.