Abstract
In dredging applications, deep sea mining and land reclamation projects typically large amounts of sediments are transported through pipes in the form of hyper concentrated (40% sediment or more) sediment-water mixtures or slurries. In this paper it is investigated how well a generic Euler-Euler CFD-model is capable to model velocity, concentration profiles and the pressure gradient of sediment above deposition limit velocity in a pipeline. This Euler-Euler solver treats both phases as a continuum with its own momentum and continuity equations. The full kinetic theory for granular flows is accounted for (no algebraic form is used) and is combined with a buoyant k-ε turbulence model for the fluid phase. The influence of the mesh size has been checked and grid convergence is achieved. All numerical schemes used are of second-order accuracy in space. The pressure gradient was calibrated by adjusting the specularity coefficient in one calibration case and kept constant afterwards. Simulations were carried out in a wide range of slurry flow parameters, in situ volume concentration (9–42%), pipe diameter (0.05–0.90 m), particle diameter (90–440 μm) and flow velocity of (3–7 m/s). The model shows satisfactory agreement to experimental data from existing literature.