An improved semi-resolved computational fluid dynamics-discrete element method for simulating liquid–solid systems with wide particle size distributions

Vertical hydraulic transport of particles with wide particle size distributions is a crucial process for coal physical fluidized mining. In the present study, an improved semi-resolved computational fluid dynamics (CFD)-discrete element method was developed to simulate particle flows with wide particle size distributions. In this model, the CFD cells allocated to the particle volume and the momentum source term were defined as the dependent domain and the influential domain, respectively. On this basis, the two-way domain expansion method and the one-way domain expansion method were adopted for the liquid–solid simulation of coarse and fine particles, respectively. The dependent domain expansion coefficient and the influential domain expansion coefficient were proposed to determine the spatial range of the dependent domain and influential domain for the coarse particles, and the optimal modeling strategy for the dependent domain and influential domain expansion coefficient for the coarse particles was determined. Furthermore, a volume expansion method and a momentum source expansion method were proposed for calculating the solid volume fraction of the dependent domain and the source term of the influential domain for the coarse particles. Furthermore, the sample point method was adopted to obtain the solid volume fraction in the dependent domain for the fine particles, and the momentum source term was only updated to the particle-located cell. Subsequently, single-particle settling and binary-particle fluidizing numerical experiments were used to verify the calculation accuracy of the model. The investigation can provide a new method for numerical simulation of liquid–solid flow with wide particle size distributions.