Por Célio Fernandes (Departamento de Engenharia Mecânica, Faculdade de Engenharia, Universidade do Porto, Portugal).

Understanding the behavior of particle-laden viscoelastic fluids (PLVF), in which the continuous or matrix phase exhibits viscoelastic properties, is a crucial element of industrial operations. Simulating the dynamic response of PLVF is a significant challenge for computational mechanics (CM) due to the intricate rheology of the continuous phase and the nonlinear many-body interactions among the constituents.

Although Direct Numerical Simulations (DNS) offer a potential solution to these computational challenges, the significant computational effort required makes them impractical for many applications. As a result, a popular alternative for numerically simulating PLVF is to employ the Computational Fluid Dynamics-Discrete Element Method (CFD-DEM) coupling strategy.

In this presentation two different formulations of the CFD-DEM algorithm will be described. The first formulation, employed a finite volume viscoelastic fluid flow solver coupled with an immersed boundary method. The second formulation describes the development of an unresolved CFD-DEM Eulerian-Lagrangian code which uses particulate-phase viscoelastic drag models that are valid for a wide range of material parameters.