An Eulerian-Lagrangian parallel algorithm for simulation of particle-laden turbulent flows

This paper presents an Eulerian-Lagrangian algorithm for direct numerical simulation (DNS) of particle-laden flows. The algorithm is applicable to perform simulations of dilute suspensions of small inertial particles in turbulent carrier flow. The Eulerian framework numerically resolves turbulent carrier flow using a parallelized, finite-volume DNS solver on a staggered Cartesian grid. Particles are tracked using a point-particle method utilizing a Lagrangian particle tracking (LPT) algorithm. The proposed Eulerian-Lagrangian algorithm is validated using an inertial particle-laden turbulent channel flow for different Stokes number cases. The particle concentration profiles and higher-order statistics of the carrier and dispersed phases agree well with the benchmark results. We investigated the effect of fluid velocity interpolation and numerical integration schemes of particle tracking algorithms on particle dispersion statistics. The suitability of fluid velocity interpolation schemes for predicting the particle dispersion statistics is discussed in the framework of the particle tracking algorithm coupled to the finite-volume solver. In addition, we present parallelization strategies implemented in the algorithm and evaluate their parallel performance.