Numerical Simulations of Solid Particle Motion in Rarefied Flow Using VOF

Other conference contribution, 2010

A novel model is proposed for simulations of gas-solid systems involving particles of size significant to that of the bounding geometry. The size of the particles is comparable to the mean free path of the gas. The model is based on the Volume of Fluid (VOF) method, but extended to allow for the incorporation of rarefaction effects. The procedure suggested is used to investigate the change in the drag on a spherical particle translating along the axis of symmetry in a cylindrical pore compared to the Stokes drag on an identical particle. It is found that the new model predicts a lower increase of the normalized drag with increasing the blockage ratio than the slip boundary condition approach used by Keh & Chang (2007). Our result is in agreement with the Monte Carlo simulation data of Stefanov, Barber, Ota & Emerson (2005).