Best practice for sand/water mixture ??
 

I would like to study the flow inside a dredging pump. The fluid is water which contains a high concentration of sand (30%-60%). My first thought was to use the particle transport model. But after some reading and a simple test calc this seems to take a long time to solve the problem.

Besides the particle transport, how can I model this behaviour? And which approach should be most efficient?

At such a high particle loading the Eularian approach looks attractive. Have you tried that?

Yes, I'm setting up some trail analysis with a multiphase model. First result looks good.
I don't know exactely how to define the material properties for the sand part and how to couple the two fluids. It seems there is not much difference between defining the sand as dispersed solid or dispersed fluid. I think because of the material properties have more influence, am i correct??

It looks like this approach will do the job.:)

I don't have enough knowledge of the details of each of those models to comment. My only recommendation would be to look at examples and tutorials of similar situations. For instance the fluidised bed models may be of interest, that may be useable in your case. At least it will give you some tips on how to do things. I did a multiphase course years ago on this sort of stuff but I don't use any heavy particle load flow models so I have forgotten it all - but I can recommend the advanced multiphase course if you get a chance to go on one.

Thanks for the tips!

Besides information on fluidised beds I also found some nice information about slurry flow modeling. At the following site you can download some papers on this subject: http://works.bepress.com/sandip_lahiri/

It seems that the model which is best for my application is described by the Phd thesis written by Sandip Kamur Lahiri. I looks like I have to do some reading these days...

Hi Michiel,

Thanks for the link for slurry flow. It is more useful to me:)