A Model Constraint for Polydisperse Solids in Multifluid Flows

A method to assess computational fluid dynamics (CFD) models for polydisperse granular solids in a multifluid flow is developed. The proposed method evaluates a consistency constraint, or a condition that an Eulerian multiphase solution for a monodisperse material in a single carrier fluid is invariant to an arbitrary decomposition into a pseudo-polydisperse mixture of multiple, identical fluid phases. The intent of this condition is to develop tests to assist model development and testing for multiphase fluid flows. When applied to two common momentum exchange models, the constraint highlights model failures for polydisperse solids interacting with a multifluid flow. It is found that when inconsistency occurs at the algebraic level, model failure clearly extends to application. When the models are reformulated to satisfy the consistency constraint, simple tests and application-scale simulations no longer display consistency failure.