ISSN Online: 2377-424X
ISBN Print: 0-85295-345-3
International Heat Transfer Conference 10
NUMERICAL COMPUTATION FOR CLUSTERING OF FINE PARTICLES
Abstract
This paper presents the direct numerical calculation for clustering of fine particles. The modeled regime is a vertical cylinder whose radius is equal to the height. At the bottom center of a cylinder, a point heat source is placed to induce natural convection. A number of fine particles are released near the heat source or dispersed in a whole domain. These fine particles are circulated in a cylinder under the Brownian force to cluster each other. The basic flow field is computed at Gr = 106 and Pr = 0.71. As for a particle, the calculation is carried out for 500, 1000 and 2000 particles of 0.1, 0.5 and 1 µm diameters in a vertical cylinder of 1.25 cm radius and height. The computation duration is 1000 seconds. It is found that particles tend to be trapped inside a vortex core at low velocity and the clustering of particles proceeds while floating there for many seconds.