Software: PFC

Fluid Coupling Summary

Currently Itasca offers two implementations of fluid coupling with PFC.

In both implementations, the equations of incompressible viscous fluid flow (the Navier-Stokes equation and the continuity equation) are formulated with a porosity term and a body force term to account for the presence of particles in the fluid. The problem domain is discretized and a two-way volume averaged coupling is calculated. This coupling methodology can be used to study fluidized beds, porous flows, pneumatic-conveying, filtering and many other applications.

The original option, "Basic Fluid Analysis", was introduced in PFC 3.0. This option is available for 2D and 3D. This option has two limitations. (1) The geometry of the fluid domain is limited to rectangular shapes. (2) The boundary conditions can only be applied along the entire length of a side of the domain.

Starting with PFC3D 4.0, the CCFD Add-On is being introduced. This add-on works with an external flow solver called CCFD and is available in 3D only. It comes with a Pre/Post-Processor called GiD, which can be used to create arbitrary domain geometries. The boundary conditions can be set on any surface. This option has the advantage that the coupling scheme is higher order, which gives more realistic results. Turbulence models, free surface flows, and non-Newtonian fluid rheologies are available.

A comparison and summary of the technical details is given in the associated PDF.