Lattice Boltzmann simulation of particle-laden turbulent channel flow

• We present the first LBM simulations of particle-laden turbulent channel flows.
• The results of single-phase flow are in excellent agreement with benchmark data.
• The LBM results of particle-laden flow are similar to finite-difference results.
• The presence of particles is shown to significantly alter flow statistics.
• The nature of flow modulation depends on spatial location relative to the walls.

Modulation of the carrier phase turbulence by finite-size solid particles is relevant to many industrial and environmental applications. Here we report particle-resolved simulations of a turbulent channel flow laden with finite-size solid particles. We discuss how the mesoscopic lattice Boltzmann method (LBM) can be applied to treat both the turbulent carrier flow and moving fluid-particle interfaces. To validate the LBM approach, we first simulate the single-phase turbulent channel flow at a frictional Reynolds number of 180. A non-uniform force field is designed to excite turbulent fluctuations. The resulting mean flow profiles and turbulence statistics were found to be in excellent agreement with the published data based on the Chebychev-spectral method. We also found that the statistics of the fully-developed turbulent channel flow are independent of the setting of some of the relaxation parameters in the LBM approach. We then consider a particle-laden turbulent channel flow under the same body force. The particles have the same density as the fluid. The particle diameter is 5% of the channel width and the average volume fraction is 7.09%. We found that the presence of the particles reduces the mean flow speed by 4.6%, implying that the fluid-particle system is more dissipative than the single-phase flow. The maximum local reduction of the mean flow speed is about 7.5%. The effects of the solid particles on the fluid rms velocity fluctuations are mixed: both reduction and augmentation are observed depending on the direction and spatial location relative to the channel walls. Overall, particles enhance the relative turbulence intensity in the near wall region and suppress the turbulence intensity in the center region. The particle concentration distribution across the channel is also complicated. We find that there is a dynamic equilibrium location resembling the Segŕe–Silberberg effect known for a laminar wall-bounded flows. Our LBM results were found to be in good agreement with results based on a finite-difference method with direct forcing to handle the moving solid particles. Additionally, phase-partitioned statistics are obtained and compared.