BetaSigmaSlurryFoam: An Open Source Code for the Numerical Simulation of Pseudo-Homogeneous Slurry Flow in Pipes

In this study, we present, test, and make available to the scientific community the betaSigmaSlurryFoam solver, which is a two-phase model based on the Eulerian-Eulerian approach for the simulation of turbulent slurry transport in piping systems. Specifically, betaSigmaSlurryFoam is a fully open source implementation, within the OpenFOAM platform, of the existing β-σ two-fluid model, developed over a decade by researchers at Politecnico di Milano, which, as certified by scientific publications, proved an effective way to simulate the pipe flow of fine particle slurries in the pseudo-homogeneous regime. In this paper, we first provide the mathematical and coding details of betaSigmaSlurryFoam. Afterwards, we verify the new solver by comparison with the earlier β-σ two-fluid model for the case of slurry transport in a horizontal pipe, demonstrating not only that the two solutions are very close to each other, but also that the effects of the two calibration coefficients β and σ are the same for the two implementations. Finally, we apply betaSigmaSlurryFoam to the more complex case of slurry transport in a horizontal pipe elbow, which has never been subject to investigation using the earlier β-σ two-fluid model. We prove that the solution of betaSigmaSlurryFoam is physically consistent, and, after assessing the impact of β and σ through an extensive sensitivity analysis, we show that reasonably good agreement could be achieved against experimental data reported in the literature even for slightly different particle sizes than those considered in our previous research. The sharing of betaSigmaSlurryFoam as open source code promotes its further development by fostering collaboration between research groups worldwide.