Computing the added mass of dispersed particles

This paper investigates the possibility of using computational fluid dynamics (CFD) to evaluate the added mass coefficient C of dispersed particles, both individually and in clusters. Using the direct numerical simulation (DNS) approach, the volume of fluid (VOF) model was employed, as implemented in Fluent software, to move the particles. C   was calculated from the initial acceleration of a buoyant particle released from rest. The acceleration data were evaluated from very short initial time intervals (typically ∼10-5s), in which buoyancy and added mass forces are predominant. The numerical parameters of the code were optimized in cases of known solutions for C so that other situations could be analyzed. Several configurations were calculated for their number of particles, shape and spatial arrangement.