Numerical modeling of fluid–particle interactions Original Research Article

Finite elements based techniques for the simulation of flow interacting with particles which can be rigid, deformable or changing in size are presented. Numerical methods first developed to simulate dendritic growth of binary alloys in two dimensions and without convection are extended to treat a variety of flow–particle interactions including forced or natural convection as well as forced or free particle motion. The calculations rely on various ways to use fixed and changing meshes to achieve the flexibility needed to model a wide variety of physical situations involving moving interfaces of complex geometry in the presence of fluid motion.