Simulation of sediment suspension using two-phase approach

A dilute sediment transport model based on the two-phase mass and momentum equations is introduced with appropriate closures on the fluid turbulence. Due to the presence of the sediment phase, an important damping mechanism in the fluid turbulent kinetic energy equation is derived and modeled. The proposed model is solve both analytically and numerically to study the sediment transport experiment in a steady uniform open channel flow (Sumer et al., 1996). In the analytical approach, we made additional approximations in order to obtain simple solutions. The analytical solution show clear improvement, which is due to a better modeling on the additional damping mechanism in the fluid turbulent kinetic energy equation, on the calculated concentration profile as compare with the solutions from the Rouse formula (Rouse, 1937). A numerical model, which solves the complete dilute two-phase equations, is also developed. The accuracy of the numerical is checked with the experimental data. With an appropriate closure on the particle stress, the numerical model can be extended to solve the sheet-flow problems in the future.