SediFoam: A general-purpose, open-source CFD–DEM solver for particle-laden flow with emphasis on sediment transport

• Published in: Computers & geosciences Vol. 89; pp. 207 - 219
• Main Authors: Sun, Rui, Xiao, Heng
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Elsevier Ltd 01-04-2016
• Subjects: CFD–DEM; Computational fluid dynamics; Computer simulation; Fluid flow; Freeware; Mathematical models; Multi-scale modeling; Particle-laden flow; Sediment transport; Solvers; Source code; CFD–DEM; Multi-scale modeling; Particle-laden flow; Sediment transport
• ISSN: 0098-3004; 1873-7803
• DOI: 10.1016/j.cageo.2016.01.011

With the growth of available computational resource, CFD–DEM (computational fluid dynamics–discrete element method) becomes an increasingly promising and feasible approach for the study of sediment transport. Several existing CFD–DEM solvers are applied in chemical engineering and mining industry. However, a robust CFD–DEM solver for the simulation of sediment transport is still desirable. In this work, the development of a three-dimensional, massively parallel, and open-source CFD–DEM solver SediFoam is detailed. This solver is built based on open-source solvers OpenFOAM and LAMMPS. OpenFOAM is a CFD toolbox that can perform three-dimensional fluid flow simulations on unstructured meshes; LAMMPS is a massively parallel DEM solver for molecular dynamics. Several validation tests of SediFoam are performed using cases of a wide range of complexities. The results obtained in the present simulations are consistent with those in the literature, which demonstrates the capability of SediFoam for sediment transport applications. In addition to the validation test, the parallel efficiency of SediFoam is studied to test the performance of the code for large-scale and complex simulations. The parallel efficiency tests show that the scalability of SediFoam is satisfactory in the simulations using up to O(107) particles.
•A robust CFD–DEM solver with emphasis on sediment transport is detailed.•Parallelization of the solver is developed to enable large-scale simulations.•The solver is capable of simulating sediment transport problems of varying complexities.•The solver has satisfactory parallel efficiency when using up to O(107) particles.