Experimental study of interactions between dual porous particles released side by side during settling

Abstract

The settling of porous particles is relevant to many fields of research, which is essential for many natural phenomena and industrial processes. However, due to the complex particle–particle and particle–fluid interactions, the mechanism of porous particles settling has not been fully understood yet. In this study, the settling behaviors and interactions of dual porous particles released side by side are experimentally investigated. The Reynolds number varied from 12 to 258, which is within the transition zone. Particle Tracking Velocimetry and Particle Image Velocimetry were utilized to capture the particles' trajectories and velocities and provide insight into the flow fields around the particles, respectively. The influences of particle porosity ɛ, initial spacing between particles l0*, and Reynolds number Re on the settling process are systematically studied. In this study, ɛ varies from 0 to 0.858 and l0* varies from 0 to 5. The experimental results reveal that there was repulsion between porous particles during settling, which was negatively correlated with l0* and ɛ. When ɛ > 0.3 and l0* < 0.5, the magnitude of the repulsion between porous particles is significantly different from that of the solid particles, and thus, the effect of porosity is important. For other cases, the interaction between porous particles is essentially the same as that between solid particles. The repulsion between the two particles is a result of flow fields asymmetry, and this repulsion vanishes when l0* > 5. The settling process can be divided into three stages depending on the repulsion. Compared to solid particles, the interactions between porous particles are weaker. The reason is that the pore reduces the duration of particle interactions in the repulsion phase, which contributes to the particles to rapid approaching to reach the stable phase.