Lagrangian Particles in Turbulence and Complex Geometries

Abstract: Wall-dominated turbulent dispersed multiphase flows occur in a variety of industrial, biological and environmental applications. The complex nature of the  arrier and the dispersed phase is elevated to a higher level introducing geometrical complexities such as curved walls. Realising such flows and particulate phases poses challenging problems both from computational and also physical point of view. The present thesis tries to address some of these issues Lagrangian computational frame.In the first step, turbulent flow in straight pipes is simulated by means ofdirect numerical simulation with a spectrally accurate code nek5000 to examine the Reynolds number effect on turbulent statistics. Adding the effect of the curvature to these canonical turbulent pipe flows generates Prandtl’s secondary motion of first kind. These configurations, as primary complex geometries in this study, are examined by means of statistical analysis to unfold the evolutionof turbulent characteristics from a straight pipe configuration. A fundamentally different Prandtl’s secondary motion of second kind is also put to test by means of adding the side-walls to a canonical turbulent channel flow and the evolution of various statistical quantities with varying the duct aspect ratios is discussed.After having obtained a characterisation of the turbulent flow in the geometries of bent pipes and ducts, the dispersion of small heavy particles is modelled in the bent pipe by means of point particles which are one-way coupled to the flow. For this purpose a parallel Lagrangian Particle Tracking (LPT) scheme is implemented in the spectral-element code nek5000. Its numerical accuracy, parallel scalability and general performance in realistic situations are scrutinised in various situations. Also, the resulting particle fields are analysed, showing that even a small degree of geometrical curvature has a profound impact on the particle concentration maps.For each of the aforementioned turbulent flow cases new and challenging questions have arisen to be addressed in the present and upcoming research works. Along with an improved understanding of the particle dispersion in the considered complex geometries, the current project is particularly intended to improve the numerical aspects of the current LPT module suitable for largescale computations.