An efficient multi-grid finite element fictitious boundary method for particulate flows with thermal convection

This paper presents a direct numerical simulation (DNS) technique, the Finite Element Fictitious Boundary Method (FEM-FBM) for the simulation of fluid-solid two-phase flows with heat transfer. The heat transfer equation is introduced to study thermal convection in fluid-solid two-phase flows. The Boussinesq approximation is considered for the coupling of momentum and temperature flow fields. Multi-grid finite element solver is used to compute flow equations of mass, momentum, and energy on a fixed Eulerian mesh which is independent of time and the solid particles are allowed to move freely in the whole computational domain. Fictitious boundary method (FBM) is used to treat the particles inside the fluid, FBM takes account of the thermal and momentum interaction between the fluid and the particles. The accuracy and stability of presented method are validated by comparing our test cases results with the results reported in the available literature. Numerical tests are performed to show that this method is potentially powerful and provides an efficient approach to simulate complex thermal convective particulate flows with a large number of particles.