ABSTRACT
Two-phase flow Large Eddy Simulation methodology is used to investigate dilute suspended load in starved-bed conditions. The objective is to better understand and model the interactions between the fluid turbulence and the particle dynamics, the so-called turbulence-particle interactions. Experimental results involving quasi neutrally buoyant sediments and natural sediments are reproduced numerically using a two-phase flow model: sedFoam implemented in the toolbox OpenFOAM. The numerical results obtained for particle-laden flows showed that the vertical profile of particle concentration for neutrally buoyant sediments is in good agreement with the experimental data while for natural sediments, the concentration profile is under-estimated. The major difference between the two-configurations is the particle response time while the flow turbulence is the same suggesting that the observed discrepancy is related to the Stokes number which becomes larger than unity for natural sediments.
