Coupled CFD-DEM Simulations: Trends, Advancements and Applications

Dear Colleagues,

Solid–fluid systems are commonly encountered in various industries including chemical, pharmaceutical and mining. With the advancement of computational resources, the use of numerical techniques to fundamentally investigate solid–fluid systems has increased rapidly in recent years. Among all available simulation techniques to simulate those systems, coupled computational fluid dynamics-discrete element method (CFD-DEM) is considered a viable and popular approach in both academia and industry. This simulation technique provides particle-level information within a reasonable computational time. Despite the common use of this method to investigate two-phase flows, there are some considerations when this method is applied. The ratio of fluid mesh element to particle diameter, the suitability of the selected interaction closures, porosity calculation procedure and computational time when simulating pilot/large-scale systems are among those concerns. This Special Issue aims to provide a platform for the community to present the new advancements made in the CFD-DEM technique and the application of this method to comprehensively investigate various two-phase systems.

Potential topics include but are not limited to the following:

• Novel ideas to reduce CFD-DEM simulations’ computational time (e.g., coarse-graining approach and application of GPU)
• Innovative developments in mapping procedure, porosity calculation and coupling treatment
• The innovative application of the CFD-DEM method in the simulation of different unit operations such as fluidized beds, cyclones, pneumatic/hydraulic conveyors, bioreactors, fermenters, mixing tanks and filtration systems
• The capability of CFD-DEM to address the industrial challenges and limitations associated with this technique
• Analysis of the influence of new drag coupling closures (for both spherical and non-spherical particles) on the accuracy of the model
• Chemical reactions, heat and mass transfer in two-phase flows

This Special Issue welcomes both original research and review papers.

Prof. Dr. Farhad Ein-Mozaffari
Dr. Mohammadreza Ebrahimi
Guest Editors

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• coupled CFD-DEM
• Eulerian-Lagrangian
• solid–fluid systems
• two-phase flow
• drag/lift models
• coarse graining
• GPU
• computational time
• fluidized beds
• cyclones
• pneumatic/hydraulic conveyors
• mixing and segregation
• filtration systems