Aerosol particle deposition in numerically simulated channel flow

Abstract

The trajectories of rigid spherical particles in a turbulent channel flow are computed using a pseudospectral computer program to simulate the three-dimensional, time-dependent flow field. It is assumed that the channel is vertical so that gravity cannot directly cause the deposition of particles on the walls. The particles are assumed to be sufficiently small and widely separated so that their influence on the fluid velocity field can be ignored. It is found that when the particles are assigned random initial locations with initial velocities that are equal to the local fluid velocity, the particles tend to accumulate in the viscous sublayer. At the edge of the viscous sublayer, the particles that deposit on the wall typically possess normal components of velocity that are comparable in magnitude to the intensity of the normal component of the velocity in the core of the channel (i.e., of the order of magnitude of the friction velocity). A shear-induced lift force having the form derived by Saffman for laminar flow is found to have virtually no effect on particle trajectories, except within the viscous sublayer where it plays a significant role both in the inertial deposition of particles and in the accumulation of trapped particles. The Reynolds number of the particles that deposit does not remain small compared with unity.