INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL FOR NUMERICAL AND ANALYTICAL METHODS IN GEOMECHANICS

Int. J. Numer. Anal. Meth. Geomech. 2016; 40:6279

Published online 22 May 2015 in Wiley Online Library (wileyonlinelibrary.com). DOI: 10.1002/nag.2387

Extended CFDDEM for free-surface flow with multi-size granules

L. Jing1, C. Y. Kwok1,*,, Y. F. Leung2 and Y. D. Sobral3
1

Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Haking Wong Building, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong
2
Department of Civil and Environmental Engineering, The Hong Kong Polytechnic University, Hong Kong
3
Departamento de Matemtica, Universidade de Braslia, Campus Universitrio Darcy Ribeiro, Braslia, DF 70910900, Brazil

SUMMARY
Computational uid dynamics and discrete element method (CFDDEM) is extended with the volume of
uid (VOF) method to model free-surface ows. The uid is described on coarse CFD grids by solving
locally averaged NavierStokes equations, and particles are modelled individually in DEM. Fluidparticle
interactions are achieved by exchanging information between DEM and CFD. An advection equation is applied to solve the phase fraction of liquid, in the spirit of VOF, to capture the dynamics of free uid surface.
It also allows inter-phase volume replacements between the uid and solid particles. Further, as the size ratio
(SR) of uid cell to particle diameter is limited (i.e. no less than 4) in coarse-grid CFDDEM, a porous
sphere method is adopted to permit a wider range of particle size without sacricing the resolution of uid
grids. It makes use of more uid cells to calculate local porosities. The developed solver (cfdemSolverVOF)
is validated in different cases. A dam break case validates the CFD-component and VOF-component.
Particle sedimentation tests validate the CFDDEM interaction at various Reynolds numbers. Water-level
rising tests validate the volume exchange among phases. The porous sphere model is validated in both static
and dynamic situations. Sensitivity analyses show that the SR can be reduced to 1 using the porous sphere
approach, with the accuracy of analyses maintained. This allows more details of the uid phase to be
revealed in the analyses and enhances the applicability of the proposed model to geotechnical problems,
where a highly dynamic uid velocity and a wide range of particle sizes are encountered. Copyright
2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
Received 18 July 2014; Revised 25 January 2015; Accepted 4 April 2015
KEY WORDS:

computational uid dynamics; discrete element method; uidparticle interaction; volume

of uid method; uid interface; three-phase ow

1. INTRODUCTION
Fluidparticle ows with free uid surface are of great interest in geotechnical engineering, such as in
sediment transport, riverbed erosion, dam failure, debris ow and many other applications. Such
problems involve complex interactions among the multiple phases. Particles are driven and carried by
the surrounding uid ow, while the motion of the uid is affected due to the presence of particles.
Particles also interact with each other and solid boundaries, by means of sliding and collision at
contacts. In addition, the total volume of the ow might signicantly increase due to erosion and
entrainment. The main challenges to model the multiphase system include the representation of uidparticle interactions at grain-scale, capturing the dynamic free uid surface and allowing diverse and
*Correspondence to: C.Y. Kwok, Department of Civil Engineering, The University of Hong Kong, Haking Wong Building, Pokfulam Road, Hong Kong.

E-mail: fkwok8@hku.hk

Copyright 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

CFDDEM FOR FREE-SURFACE FLOW

63

wide-range particle size distributions. The last one is a particular need for geotechnical problems
(e.g. debris ow, dam failure and landslide erosion) in which geomaterials may vary from nes to boulders.
Discrete element method (DEM) is increasingly popular to model granular media by capturing the
grain-scale movements and interactions. It can be coupled with different computation methods for
uid dynamics to simulate uidparticle ows such as the lattice-Boltzmann method (LBM), where
ctive particles representing the uid phase are used over a discrete lattice mesh, and the discrete
Boltzmann equation is solved to simulate the ow of uid. The method is attractive because the porescale behaviour of the uid could be described naturally. One application of the LBMDEM model is
to simulate underwater avalanches in two dimensions [1], and a few attempts towards the threedimensional LBMDEM have been reported very recently [2, 3]. However, because the uid particles
are required to be much smaller than solid particles, most coupled LBMDEM solvers for threedimensional problems are yet under development, due to the high demands on computational power.
Alternatively, the computational uid dynamics and discrete element method (CFDDEM)
approach, which uses the coarse-grid approximation, can be applied to model uidparticle ows [4].
Locally averaged NavierStokes equations [5] are adopted to govern the motion of the uid ow, and
it transfers local porosities and additional momentums from DEM to CFD, taking into account uid
particle interactions. It has been improved and applied to a number of industrial problems including
uidization, pneumatic conveying, hopper discharge and also to geotechnical engineering problems
such as the stability analysis of embankment dams and soil slopes [69]. However, the free uid
surface was not taken into account in all these simulations using the coarse-grid CFDDEM.
In this paper, the volume of uid (VOF) method proposed in [10] is adopted to locate the free surface.
The basic idea of VOF is to solve an additional transport equation of the volume fraction of the liquid phase
(against air), which serves as an indicator of the wet/dry condition in each uid cell. Incorporating VOF
into CFDDEM has been reported to simulate sediment transport [11, 12], where a source term was
articially added to the VOF equation to account for the contribution of particles. However, adding the
source term violates the conservation of the fractional volume (Section 2.2.1). In this study, a fully
conservative transport equation considering three phases (i.e. air, liquid and solid) is newly proposed
and integrated into the coarse-grid CFDDEM. The major advantage of this approach is that the threephase VOF equation allows volume replacement between the particulate phase and the uid phase.
One challenge of using coarse-grid CFDDEM is that the size of particles must be much smaller
than the mesh size. When the particle size approaches the mesh size, the local average assumption is
no longer valid, leading to erroneous results [1315]. In order to model problems that involve a
wide range of particle sizes, such as debris ow, the mesh size may be much larger than the ne
particles, and hence, the particle-scale behaviour of the uid is not precisely captured. One way to
overcome this difculty is to borrow the porous cube method for porosity calculations in [14]. It
makes use of more uid cells to calculate the local porosity on each particle, and the obtained
porosity eld could circumvent the resolution-dependent local average. It will be shown in this
study that by applying this idea to the coarse-grid CFDDEM, a considerable improvement is
achieved in terms of the range of particle sizes that can be modelled in the analyses.
This paper extends these existing research contributions and combines the modied VOF, CFDDEM
and the porous cube approach. Some preliminary results can be found in [15]. The extended CFDDEM
with three-phase VOF is implemented within two open source C++ libraries, that is, OpenFOAM and
CFDEMproject, the latter including LIGGGHTS for DEM simulations and CFDEMcoupling for the data
exchange between CFD and DEM [1618]. The developed solver is referred to as cfdemSolverVOF. In
Section 2 of this paper, governing equations, the three-phase VOF method, the modied porosity model
for uid-particle interactions and the entire coupling scheme are presented. In Section 3, validation cases
for the three-phase VOF are presented. A dam break case validates the VOF component. Particle
sedimentation tests validate the CFDDEM interaction crossing the interface at various Reynolds
numbers. Water-level rising tests validate the volume exchange among soliduid phases. In Section 4,
the proposed porous sphere model is validated in both static and dynamic situations. The former presents
the calculation of local porosities in a densely packed sample, while in the latter case, the Couette ow
of a suspension examines the velocity proles obtained from different porosity models. In Section 5, the
limitations of the coarse-grid CFDDEM are analysed by performing a sensitivity study on the mesh
particle size ratio. Improvements achieved by using the modied porosity model are discussed.
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2. METHOD
For clarication, a schematic system of the free-surface uid with granules is shown in Figure 1. The
primary uid (uid 1) is the uid under consideration, while the secondary uid (uid 2) is air, as in
most geotechnical problems. The two phases of uid are assumed immiscible with each other, and
the interface is the so-called free surface. Particles could be either dry or immersed, having
interactions with other particles and the surrounding uid. The three-phase system is governed by
three sets of equations, that is, the particle motion equations in DEM, the extended local-averaged
NavierStokes equations in CFD and the modied VOF equation. The governing equations for
DEM and CFD are sequentially described in Section 2.1, while the three-phase VOF equation is
proposed in Section 2.2. The calculation of local porosities is discussed in Section 2.3, where the
uidparticle interactions are described. In Section 2.4, the computing scheme of the entire system
with coupling and data exchanging is presented.
2.1. Governing equations
2.1.1. DEM equations. In DEM [19], all particles in the computational domain are located by solving
their trajectories. The motion of each particle is governed by
c

ni
dui
Fcij Ffi mi g
mi
dt
j1

(1)

Ii

ni
di
Mcij
dt
j1

(2)

where ui denotes the translational velocity of particle i, Fcij is the contact force on particle i by particle j
or walls, Ffi is the particleuid interaction force acting on particle i (Figure 1b), g is the gravitational
acceleration, i is the particle angular velocity, Ii is the moment of inertia and Mij is the moment acting
on particle i by particle j or walls.
Note that the particleuid interaction force is assumed to be exerted on the centroid of
particles. It follows the basic assumption of local-average approach that uid variables in one
cell are averaged over the residing particles, thus no torque acting on the surface of particles.

Figure 1. A system of uidparticle ow with free surface. (a) Overview schematic. (b) Fluidparticle interactions, surface tension and volume phase fractions for each phase ().
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Therefore, no contribution of particleuid interaction is specied in Equation (2). The

assumption is consistent with the applicability of the local-average CFDDEM [4]. It is also
discussed in Section 2.3.2.
In the DEM code, either the Hooke or Hertzian contact law is employed in conjunction with the
Coulombs friction law to describe the inter-particle contact behaviour (i.e. the Fcij term). Rolling
resistance can also be included to account for the effect of particle shape and roughness.
2.1.2. CFD equations. In CFD, due to the contribution of granules and the free surface, the Navier
Stokes equations for an incompressible viscous uid are extended as









f f uf
 
 f f uf uf f pm gxf  f f s  Rpf
(3)
t


f
 f uf 0
(4)
t
where uf denotes the velocity of uid, f is the density of uid and f is the volume fraction of uid in
one uid cell or the local porosity, following the assumption of local average [4].
The terms in the parenthesis, pm + (g  x)f, are rewritten from  p + f g, where p is the uid
pressure, pm = p  f g  x is the modied pressure by rearrangement, and x is the coordinate vector.
The rearrangement avoids the sharp change of total pressure around the free uid surface, which is
likely induced by the elevation component of the total pressure [20]. The negative sign of the
pressure term suggests that compression is positive.
The stress tensor of uid is = f (uf +(uf)T ), where f is the dynamic viscosity of uid. It is worth
noting that in the numerical implementation, the turbulence closure is considered and various
turbulence models can be incorporated [17]. They are generally categorised as direct numerical
simulation, Reynolds-averaged NavierStokes and large eddy simulation. A brief review can be
found in [21]. Only laminar ow is considered in this paper.
The momentum exchange with particles, Rpf, is calculated mainly from particle-based drag forces
(for details, see Section 2.3). The volumetric surface force fs =   1 is resulted from the
additional pressure gradient generated at the free uid surface, where is the surface tension, is
the mean curvature of the free surface and 1 is the volume fraction of the primary uid phase
(liquid phase). Correspondingly, 2 is the volume fraction of the secondary uid phase (air). In the
sense of VOF (Section 2.2), the density and viscosity of the uid take the weighted average based
on phase fractions, that is, f = 11 + 22 and f = 11 + 22, where sufxes 1 and 2 denote the
liquid and air phase, respectively.
2.1.3. PISO algorithm for CFD equations. The governing equations for the uid phase are solved in
the spirit of the nite volume method [21]. For transient ow problems such as debris ow, the
discretization is achieved over both spatial and temporal domains. The pressure implicit with
splitting of operators (PISO) algorithm [22] is adopted to perform iterations, because the Navier
Stokes equations are velocity-pressure coupled.
A typical PISO loop includes three stages shown as follows. Firstly, the momentum equation is
solved using the velocity and pressure elds from the previous time step, yielding a predicted
velocity eld. The discretized form of the momentum equation (3) is read
auP up Hu  f pm  f gxf f s  Rpf

(5)

where auP and H(u) arise from the discretized algebraic equation. Specically, auP is the matrix
 
coefcient relating to the centroid point (P) being solved, and Hu  f  auN uN includes
N

the source part  (f ) and the transport part auN uN , that is the matrix coefcient relating for
N

neighbouring centroids (N) multiplied by corresponding velocities. The predicted velocity is then
written by
i
 1 h
Hu  f pm  f gxf f s  Rpf
(6)
up auP
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Secondly, the pressure eld is updated in a pressure-correction process. Substituting the predicted
velocity into the continuity equation (4) yields the pressure equation:
n  
o
n  h
io
1
1
f

f Hu  2f gxf f f s  f Rpf
 2f auP pm  auP
t

(7)

Compared with the Poissons equation of pressure in the original liquidliquid CFD schemes [23],
Equation (7) has an additional time-derivative term of porosity at the right hand side, and f appears in
each term inside the divergence operators. They account for the contributions of the granular phase.
Finally, the velocity eld is corrected with the new pressure eld solved from Equation (7), and
uxes obeying conservation laws are calculated.
2.2. Three-phase VOF method
2.2.1. Transport equation. In the VOF method, the volume fraction of liquid (1) is a scalar
transported by the local uid velocity [10, 23]. In the current three-phase system, it is
mathematically described as follows:






f 1
 f 1 uf  f 1 1  1 ur 0
(8)
t
where ur = u1u2 is the relative velocity referred to as compression velocity. The third term is used
to compress the interface to a sharper region. The rst two terms on the left hand side have the
same advection form as the continuity equation (4), indicating the fact that in an incompressible uid,
the conservation of mass is equivalent to the conservation of volume, hence, the volume fraction.
The presence of f in both terms is due to the local average, while 1 serves as an indicator of the
wet/dry condition. Fluid cells with 1 = 1 in the computational domain are cells fully lled with
liquid, while cells with 1 = 0 are dry air cells. Fluid cells with 0 < 1 < 1 are cells that accommodate
the free uid surface.
The volume of each phase in a typical three-phase uid cell is shown in Figure 2(a). It is worth
noting that the porosity, or void fraction, is f = 1  Vpi/Vc = (V1 + V2)/Vc, where Vpi is the volume
of the ith particle mapped from the DEM domain into the corresponding uid cell, V1 and V2 are the
volume of uid 1 and uid 2 (air), respectively, and Vc is the total volume of the cell. The other
phase fraction 1 is the volume fraction of uid 1 over the volume of void (Vv = V1 + V2), yielding
1 = V1/(V1 + V2) and 2 = V2/(V1 + V2) = 1  1. Thus, over the total volume Vc it gives the locally
averaged phase fraction, f 1 = V1/Vc, which is the quantity transported by Equation (8).
An assumption is made in the current VOF method that the volume fractions of uid and solid are
calculated regardless of their positions in the uid cell. A sample case in one direction is schematically
shown in Figure 2(b), where a group of particles enter an interface cell during the time interval t, in
the form of volume ux through the top face. The phase fraction (1) is updated from t1;i1 to tt
1;i1 ,
.
Owing
to
the
cellwhere i and i + 1 are cell-centroids, due to the varied porosity from tf ;i1 to tt
f ;i1
based discretization, the update of free surface occurs before the particles actually reach the free
surface. For the same reason, the distribution of the phase fraction is smeared over a few cells, and
the exact position of free surfaces is determined algebraically from phase fractions [20].

Figure 2. Three-phase volume of uid method. (a) Phase fractions. (b) Solidliquid volume exchange
through volume ux.
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Compared with the conventional VOF method [10, 23], the presence of f in the temporal derivative
term of Equation (8) leads to additional decomposed temporal terms:


f 1
1
f
f
1
(9)
t
t
t
The right hand side of the preceding equation reveals how the temporal change of porosity (f)
contributes to the evolution of phase fraction 1.
The conventional VOF method has been modied by Gruber and Goniva [11, 12], in which the
arbitrarily added term aiming to consider the contribution of granular phase is 1  (f u f). It is
equivalent to the second term on the right hand side of Equation (9), according to the continuity
equation (4). However, the major difference in [11, 12] is that the transported quantity is 1, as in
the conventional VOF, rather than the local-averaged f 1, as derived in this study. In [11, 12], the
two terms playing the similar role to the right hand side of Equation (9) are


1
1  f uf
t
which is inconsistent with Equation (9). In other words, it breaks the conservation of volume fractions.
The issue is solved in the presented formulation.
2.2.2. Discretisation. The VOF equation is solved with the ux-corrected transport method [24]. The
basic idea is to limit the solved ux with specied global maxima (1 1) and minima (1 0),
maintaining the solution boundedness and then to advance in time by explicit methods. The
discretized term of Equation (8) is given by



 


f 1
f 1 uf F SF f 1 1  1 ur F SF 0
(10)
t
F
F
where SF denotes the surface vector and sufx F indicates ux. The compression term is discretized
according to [24] and is not repeated here.
2.3. Fluidparticle interactions
2.3.1. Calculation of local porosity. The local porosity plays a crucial role in uidparticle
interactions in the local-averaged CFDDEM. The porosity mentioned in previous sections is
calculated by summing the volume of particles with centroids located in one single uid cell,
divided by the volume of the cell (referred to as centred model [9, 16]). To improve the accuracy of
porosity calculations, one can divide the particles that are riding on the adjacent faces into their
actual portions in each cell (referred to as divided model) [9, 16]. In either way, the local porosity is
cell-dependent, that one particle contributes only to the porosity calculation of the cells where it is
actually located. Numerically, this might be responsible for the erroneous results arising when the
maximum particle size gets close to the uid mesh size [13, 14, 16], because the discrete particles
would cause discontinuities to the porosity eld in the uid domain.
To overcome the limitation of the meshparticle size ratio, an alternative way to calculate local
porosities, the porous sphere model, is presented here. It is similar to the porous cube method [14]
and is available as the bigParticle model in open source CFDEMcoupling [16]. The porous sphere
model is illustrated and compared with the conventional approach (divided model) in Figure 3. For
one particle that is under consideration, its contribution to the local porosities is not just evaluated in
the cells where it is actually located (as in Figure 3a), but in the cells that are centred within a larger
spherical region. The spherical region is referred to as the porous sphere (Figure 3b).
The centroid of the porous sphere is identical with the concerned particle, and the diameter dps is
calculated by multiplying a constant factor to the actual particle diameter, viz.
d ps ad p

(11)

where a is a constant, and its determination is discussed in Section 5.1. The volume of the porous
sphere should be no less than the actual particle, that is, a 1. To calculate the portions of porosities
contributed by the considered particle to the relevant cells, its actual volume Vp is equally
distributed to the porous sphere by
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Figure 3. Schematic of the porosity models. (a) Actual particle (divided model). (b) Porous sphere model.
CFD, computational uid dynamics.

ps

Vp
V ps

(12)

where ps is the particle volume per unit volume of the porous sphere, and Vps is the actual volume of
all cells covered by the porous sphere. Different porous spheres are allowed to overlap in one uid cell
[14]. For one uid cell, it sums up the portions from all relevant porous spheres, and thus, the local
porosity in the current cell is given by
(13)
f 1  ps;i
i

where ps,i is the portion from the ith porous sphere in the uid cell under consideration.
The porous sphere model calculates porosities beyond the cells where particles are actually located
and makes use of more computational points within the spherical region to allow a higher resolution of
CFD grids. More discussions can be found in Section 5.
2.3.2. Interaction forces. Mathematically, the particles and the uid interact by exchanging
momentum either implicitly or explicitly. For instance, the pressure-based buoyancy force exerted
on a particle measuring Vp in volume is Vp(p +  ), which has been implicitly integrated into
the momentum equation of uid after replacing Vp with (1  f) [8, 25]. Another important interaction
force, the drag force, is referred to in the momentum equation of uid as the explicit momentum
exchange term Rpf. It can be calculated from the drag model Kpf by


Rpf Kpf uf  up
(14)
where up is the cell-based averaged particle velocity. One widely used drag model named after Di
Felice [26] gives the expression of Kpf :

1
2
(15)
Kpf C d f d p uf  up 1
f
8
where dp is the average diameter of particles in one uid cell and Cd is the particleuid drag
coefcient given by
!2
4:8
(16)
C d 0:63 p
Rep
Note that the porosity f is implicitly considered in the particle Reynolds number Rep:


f f d p  u f  u p 
Rep
f
And is a corrective coefcient given by

1:5  log10 Rep

3:7  0:65exp 
2
Copyright 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

(17)

2 !
(18)

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CFDDEM FOR FREE-SURFACE FLOW

69

The calculation of uidparticle interactions also implies that the uid exerts no torque to the
particles. According to the local average approach, all uid mechanical variables are replaced by
averaging over regions large compared with the particle spacing but small compared with the
complete system [5]. The pressure gradients surrounding a particle are not signicant, and the drag
forces on the surface of the particle are, on average, pointing to the same direction. Fluid torques are
thus negligible, because particles are considered with high rotational inertia. As a result, uid forces
exerted on a single particle could be well equivalent to a resultant force acting on its centroid,
without dening any torque from the uid.
Besides the buoyancy force and drag force, other uidparticle interactions may include virtual
mass force and lift force, which would not be discussed in the current study. However, it is possible
to incorporate various types of interactional forces into the model [16].
2.4. Coupling and data exchanging
The scheme of the extended CFDDEM model is shown in Figure 4. The computing cycle runs from
the DEM side to the CFD side. In DEM, the position of each particle is located, and all contacts are
detected. By solving motion equations (1) and (2) based on the exerting forces, the DEM solver
calculates the particle positions and velocities. It runs n DEM cycles before passing information,
such as the local porosity and assembled momentum source terms, to the CFD solver through the
coupling module. Prior to the sub-cycle of CFD, the free uid surface is constructed by solving the
VOF equation (8), and uid cell conditions are updated. Then the governing equations of the uid
phase are solved iteratively following PISO algorithm as in Equations (6) and (7). Once the iteration
is converged, the uid forces acting on each particle are calculated from the uid velocity eld. The
uid forces are sent back to the DEM solver through coupling, and a new cycle starts.
Note that time steps in the DEM solver are usually smaller (e.g. n = 100) than those in the CFD
solver [16]. It meets the high requirements of maximum particle overlap for particle collision
modelling and ensures the computational efciency of the entire computing cycle.

3. VALIDATION: THREE-PHASE VOF MODEL

The pure DEM part of the developed cfdemSolverVOF is implemented with the well-validated
LIGGGHTS [27]. The CFD and VOF components, the uidparticle interactions and the volume
replacements among phases are validated step-by-step. All cases in Section 3 adopt 1 : 4 as the
meshparticle size ratio (SR = 4), and the porous sphere model is turned off. The sensitivity to SR
and the discussion on the use of porous sphere model are presented in Section 5.

Figure 4. Computing cycle of the extended computational uid dynamics and discrete element method
(CFDDEM) scheme. VOF, volume of uid method.
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3.1. Dam break

This case validates the CFD and VOF components of cfdemSolverVOF. The setup of a three-dimensional
dam break case consists of a cubic tank, a water column initially at rest behind a bafe and an obstacle at
the bottom of the tank as shown in Figure 5(a). After the bafe is quickly removed, the water column
collapses and impacts on the obstacle, creating a complicated ow in the tank.
The result from cfdemSolverVOF is rst veried with a distributed VOF solver (interFoam) in
OpenFOAM [17]. In Figure 5(b), the evolving prole is plotted at four time points (t = 0.1, 0.5, 1.0
and 2.0 s), and good agreements are achieved. The uid pressure at the bottom is normalised by the
initial pressure, while the horizontal distance is normalised by the width of the tank.
Two monitoring points at the base of the tank are probed on the left and right of the obstacle.
The left point is located inside the water column, while the right one is initially dry. The
evolving elevations of the free water surface above the two monitoring points are plotted in
Figure 6, where the theoretical nal water level is marked for validation. The elevations are
normalised by the initial height of the water column, while the dimensionless time is calculated
p
by T t= gB , where t is real computing time and T is dimensionless time. It is seen that the
normalised elevation above the left point is initially unity and dramatically dropped as the water
column collapses under gravity. A water wave is formed after it hits the right wall of the tank
and then oscillates around the theoretical nal water level. For the point on the right, a large
variation of elevation is captured approximately at T = 0.2, as the reected surge impacts the base
of the tank. As time is advanced, water lls the dry area and the normalised elevation rises up
around the theoretical nal water level.

3.2. Particle sedimentation tests

Particle sedimentation test is based on the fact that a solid particle settling in the viscous uid will reach
its terminal velocity, as its gravitational force is balanced by the uidparticle forces (e.g. drag force
and buoyancy). To obtain solutions of the particle velocity, an experiment-based empirical relation
for drag force proposed by Wen and Yu [28] is adopted to solve Equation (1). For Rep > 1000, the
drag coefcient Cd is 0.44, while for Rep 1000, it reads

Cd


24 1 0:15Re0:687
p
Rep

An assumption is made in the empirical solution that the particle motion has no effect on the uid
velocity (uf = 0). Three cases with increasing Reynolds numbers are listed in Table I.

Figure 5. Simulations of a dam break case. (a) Geometry. (b) Evolution of pressure prole.
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Figure 6. Evolution of free surface elevation on the (a) left and (b) right of the obstacle.

Table I. Parameters for particle sedimentation tests.

Case

Fluid

f (kg/m3)

1
Glycerol
1260
2
Water
998.2
3
Air/water
1.2 (air)
Particle properties for all cases:

f (Pa-s)
1.5
9.98 104
1.78 105 (air)

dp (m)

p (kg/m3)

Rep

Mesh size (m)

0.01
2500
0.35
0.0005
1500
16.78
0.001
3000
175
E = 5 106 Pa, = 0.45, er = 0.3

0.04
0.002
0.004

In the rst two cases, a single particle is settling inside the uid. The predicted velocity in the
simulation has a good agreement with the empirical solution as shown in Figure 7. The small
discrepancy for the water case is because the empirical solution assumes uid velocity as zero.
In the third case, the particle starts falling (in air) from 0.045 m high above the water surface in a
container. It falls across the interface and then hits the bottom of the container. The predicted
velocity is in good agreement with the empirical solution, as shown in Figure 8(a). The particle is
accelerated by gravity before reaching the water surface, and then it is slowed down signicantly, as
water provides resistance to its motion. The velocity approaches to a steady state (terminal velocity)

Figure 7. Single particle settles inside water and glycerol. (a) Geometry. (b) Velocity.
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Figure 8. Single particle drops from air into water. (a) Velocity. (b) Forces.

until the particle bounces at the bottom and then stays still. The peak velocity as the particle reaches the
water surface is relatively lower than the empirical one. It could be explained by the assumption made
in Figure 2(b) that the particlesurface interaction occurs as early as the particle enters the interface cell.
Moreover, as the magnitude of the predicted velocity is slightly lower than the empirical solution, the
particle takes a longer duration to reach the bottom in the simulation. Forces exerted on the sphere
are plotted in Figure 8(b). It is seen that the uid force is negligible until the particle starts to
immerse into the water. A sharp increase of uidparticle interaction is captured, corresponding to
the sharp decrease of the velocity. Then the increasing uid force gradually balances the gravity, and
the total force approaches to zero exactly the same time the particle reaches its terminal velocity.
Another sharp increase of total force is observed as the particle hits the bottom wall.
Particle sedimentation tests show that for one single particle settling in a single-phase or two-phase
uid, the proposed cfdemSolverVOF could achieve good agreements on the calculation of uid
particle interaction forces and terminal velocities at different Reynolds numbers.
3.3. Rising water level due to particle pouring
To validate the volume replacement among the phases in the three-phase VOF method, the rising water
level due to particle pouring is tested. In theory, the pouring particles will expel the contained water,
and the water level will be raised. The raised water level is calculated by dividing the total volume
of particles by the cross-section area of the container. Table II lists two situations under consideration.
In the rst case, all particles are initiated inside water, aiming to obtain less oscillatory results to
facilitate the validation. The initial setup, nal uidparticle conguration and the result are shown
in Figure 9. It shows that the result calculated with cfdemSolverVOF agrees well with the theoretical
solution at both the particle pouring stage and the nal deposition stage.
Under the second situation, the injection region is moved above the water surface (Figure 10). It is
seen that due to the impact of poured particles onto the water surface, a signicant uctuation of the
water level is observed. Nevertheless, an approximated injection rate presents the same tendency as
the injecting rate line. The calculated elevation has not stabilised after 3 s, but is converging towards
the theoretical nal water level.
Table II. Parameters for the water level rising tests.
Case
1
2

Initial water
level (m)

Injecting
region (m)

Injecting
rate (s1)

Injecting
duration (s)

dp
(m)

0.4
0.3

0.240.3
0.360.42

3000
3000

1
1

0.005
0.005

Copyright 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

p
(kg/m3)
2600
2600

Mesh size
(m)

Container size
(m3)

0.02
0.02

0.1 0.1 0.5

0.1 0.1 0.5

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Figure 9. Particles pouring under water. (a) Initial conguration. (b) Final conguration. (c) Elevation evolving at the probe point (centre of free surface).

Figure 10. Particles pouring from air into water. (a) Initial conguration. (b) Final conguration. (c) Elevation evolving at the probe point (centre of free surface).

4. VALIDATION: POROUS SPHERE MODEL

In the previous section, the porous sphere model is not activated and SR = 4. In this section, the porous
sphere model is validated in both static and dynamic situations. The particleuidparticle indirect
interaction is also discussed in the subsequent Couette ow case.
4.1. Porosity calculations
A densely packed sample is created, where 245 000 mono-disperse particles with dp = 0.0025 m are
randomly located in a cubic box sized 0.15 m and then mapped into the CFD domain. The average
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connectivity of the dense sample is 5.79. Different porosity models (i.e. the centred, divided and
porous sphere models) are adopted to calculate the porosity eld statically. A 0.1 m segment of the
centreline on the horizontal mid-plane is probed to plot the results, as shown in Figure 11.
The theoretical result of the average porosity is 0.406. It can be seen that for SR = 1, the
results using centred model and divided model show dramatic uctuations of the porosity
eld across the cells, because as the particle size approaches the mesh size, error grows when
the volume of particles are mapped into the volume of uid cells. Particles centred near the
cell faces are highly responsible for the uctuations obtained by the centred model. On the
other hand, the results achieved by the porous sphere model (a 5) are much less scattered
and converge to the theoretical value. It shows that by calculating local porosity over more
uid cells, the mesh-dependent uctuations are circumvented. The results indicate that at least
in a bed of static particles, the porous sphere model would not cause non-physical spatial
correlations, and it performs better in calculating the porosity eld when the particle size is
approaching the mesh size.
4.2. Couette ow of a suspension
A two-dimensional Couette ow is set up on the plane perpendicular to gravity, hence the absence of
gravity in the analyses (Figure 12). The particle concentration of the dilute suspension is 0.79%,
consisting of a Newtonian uid (viscosity f = 0.01 Pa-s) and 200 spherical particles (dp = 0.0001 m).
It is subjected to the shearing caused by two non-slip conning walls moving in opposite directions
at velocity u0 = 0.0005 m/s, while the distance between the two rigid walls is d = 0.01 m. The uid
Reynolds number is Re = 0.98. Periodic boundaries are imposed in the ow direction for both the
CFD and DEM sides.
The velocity prole in the fully developed, steady state is examined (Figure 13). For the pure uid
case, the proposed model can accurately capture the linear velocity prole in theory (the inserted graph
in Figure 13). For the cases of uidparticle mixtures, different concentrations (0.23.14%) have been
attempted in Stokes ows (i.e. Re < 1), all giving the similar non-linear shapes with the presented
concentration (0.79%). The non-linearity is attributed to the loss of homogeneity of the suspension,
as discrete DEM particles are added into the discretized CFD domain. Physically, the presence of
particles drags down the ow and increases the energy dissipation. The velocity uctuation of
particles also contributes to the formation of the non-linear velocity prole. The shear rate is the
highest near the walls and decreases as the centreline is approached. The results show that the
particleuidparticle interactions are qualitatively well captured, despite the absence of a
theoretical solution for suspension cases.

Figure 11. Results of the static porosity eld calculation.

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Figure 12. Geometry of the suspension sheared by two moving rigid walls.

Figure 13. Velocity proles with different porosity models.

The cases with size ratio SR = 5 (determined upon the pure uid case) present convergent
results, regardless of the chosen porosity models. In this sense, the velocity prole at
convergence is employed to validate the cases with lower size ratio (SR = 1 and 2.5). All
velocity proles calculated with different porosity models agree well with the convergent result
(Figure 13). It demonstrates that the proposed cfdemSolverVOF could qualitatively predict the
velocity prole of dilute suspensions. In the dynamical uidparticle coupling problem, the
porous sphere model would not cause (extra) non-physical spatial correlations than other
generally accepted porosity models.

5. DISCUSSION ON FLUID CELLPARTICLE SIZE RATIO

It was pointed out in previous studies that erroneous results arise as the particle size approaches the cell
size [13, 14, 16]. The following section quanties this grid-dependent problem by performing
sensitivity analyses on the meshparticle size ratio and the constant a in the porous sphere
method (Section 5.1) and presents the improvements achieved with the porous sphere model in the
dynamic uidparticle simulations (Section 5.2).
5.1. Sensitivity analyses
The grid-dependent problem is investigated by repeating the particle sedimentation test in Figure 7. The
convergence of terminal velocity with the increasing SR is studied, based on which a practically
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appropriate SR is suggested. Different cases are designed with two uids (i.e. water and oil), varied
particleuid density ratios (i.e. 1.5 and 2.6) and different Reynolds numbers. For each conguration,
the size of uid cells is adjusted in such a way that SRs equal to 1.5, 2, 3, 4 and 5 are achieved. The
results are plotted in Figure 14, where the terminal velocities are normalised by the ones at convergence.
As the size ratio increases to 4, the terminal velocity converges to a certain value with relative
error under 1%, regardless of the uid property, density ratio and Reynolds number. Thus, it is
suggested that the uid cell should be at least 4 times larger in size than the maximum diameter
of particles.
The suggested size ratio yields a convergent solution, in terms of the particle motion in DEM
and uidparticle interactions. From the perspective of CFD calculations, however, ner grids
might be required to capture more details of the uid eld. The porous sphere model presented in
Section 2.3 improves the computational performance when the particle size approaches to the size
of uid cells. A key factor is the constant a in Equation (11). The computational accuracy and
stability mainly rely on the determination of the factor a. Thus, a sensitivity analysis is carried
out to the sedimentation case, where the diameter and density of the particle are 0.002 m and
1500 kg/m3, respectively. The decreasing size ratio, SR = 4, 2, 1.5 and 1, is used for CFD
meshing. For each SR, the constant a is varied from 1 to 5 where a = 1 means the porous
sphere model is turned off. Results are shown in Figure 15, where the convergence of terminal
velocities is observed with the increasing of a.
Sensitivity analysis shows that when a = 4, the size ratio is successfully dropped down to around
1.0 (relative error below 1%). For SR = 1, the accuracy of terminal velocity is improved by 45%
compared with the case where the porous sphere model is not used. To continue decreasing the
size ratio (i.e. SR < 1) is not suggested, because it violates the basic assumption of local-averaged
CFDDEM. Thus, a = 4 is suggested for porous sphere model, especially in cases where the uid
mesh size is close to the maximum particle size.
In fact, the two sensitivity analyses presented earlier could be interpreted together by considering the
correlation of SR = 4 and a = 4 (Figure 16). In either way, a volume sized 4dp in each dimension is
considered to calculate the porosity contributed by the particle sized dp, despite that the corner cells
are not included in the porous sphere region. While similar porosities can be obtained from the
coarse-grid and ne-grid cases, the ne-grid case using porous sphere model allows a 4 times
higher resolution for the CFD calculations (Figure 16). The simple mechanism underlies the
improvements made in the use of porous sphere model.

5.2. Improvements due to porous sphere model

The following cases demonstrate the advantages of using the porous sphere model in the dynamic
situations. Firstly, the pouring case in Figure 10 is repeated with a rened mesh resolution, which

Figure 14. Sensitivity analysis on the size ratio of uid cell to particle diameter.
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Figure 15. Sensitivity analysis on the constant a for porous sphere model.

Figure 16. Correlation of size ratio (SR) and constant a in coarse (left) and ne (right) grids.

provides more details of the disturbance of water surface. Secondly, multi-size particles with the
maximum size equal to the mesh size are adopted to repeat the pouring case, with the total volume
of particles unaltered. Details of the pouring particles are listed in Table III.
Figure 17 shows the free surface proles of the base case and the rened mesh case, the particle
depositions of the base case and the multi-size case, and the evolution of free-surface elevations for
all the three cases.
The results show that in the rened mesh case with SR = 1, the water surface is better dened
compared with the base case where SR = 4, owing to the use of porous sphere model. It turns out at
the interface region that the free uid surface is sharper, so the two uid phases could be better
dened and the interface conditions (e.g. pressure) could be imposed more precisely. Another
observation is that the rened mesh case captures more waves while the base case presents a
steadier but rougher surface. The amplitude of the water wave increases slightly after 2 s due to the
interference with the reected waves coming from boundaries. The reected waves cannot be
avoided, because making the container wider conicts with the major goal of observing the rise of

Table III. Parameters of pouring particles for comparison.

Cases

Porous sphere model Mesh size (m) dp (m) Number of particles Total volume (m3)

Base case (SR = 4)

Rened mesh (SR = 1)
Multi-size (SR = 1 and 4)

Off
On
On

Particle properties for all cases:

Copyright 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

0.02
0.005
0.02

0.005
3000
0.005
3000
0.005
1208
0.02
28
6
E = 5 10 Pa, = 0.45, er = 0.3

1.96 104
1.96 104
1.96 104

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Figure 17. Improvements due to porous sphere model. (a) Free surface proles for base case (lower) and
rened mesh case (upper) at t = 3 s. Red denotes water, blue denotes air, while other colours denote the interface region. (b) Particle depositions for base case (upper) and multi-size case (lower) at t = 3 s. (c) Comparison of elevation evolution at the centre of free surface.

water level. More importantly, the average water level after particle pouring reaches the theoretical
level of 0.32 m, which is valid in the sense of the particlewater volume replacements.
For the multi-size case, the maximum particle size is identical to the mesh size (SR = 1), and good
results are achieved regarding the particle deposition and the evolution of surface elevation. It is
worth noting that when the porous sphere model is turned off for the aforementioned cases,
erroneous results are obtained. Therefore, the aforementioned cases demonstrate that the porous
sphere model indeed improves the representation of uidparticle interactions, thus allowing a wider
range of particle size and a higher resolution of uid grids. In this sense, it extends the application
of the current CFDDEM model to relevant engineering problems, where wide particle size
distributions and high dynamics of free-surface uid are involved.

6. CONCLUDING REMARKS
The formulation of an extended CFDDEM is presented in this paper. It incorporates the VOF method
and allows data exchanging among CFD, DEM and VOF. Each component of the newly developed
solver cfdemSolverVOF is validated in various cases. Features under examination include the
dynamics of viscous uid ow and its free surface, the motion of solid particles, interactions
between particles and the surrounding uid, and the volume exchange between the solid and uid
phases. The key contributions of this paper are listed as follows.
1) A modied three-phase VOF model allows volume replacement between solid and uid. The
new advection equation in VOF ensures the conservation of phase fractions, and it governs the
dynamics of free surface.
2) A porous sphere model is used to circumvent the grid-dependent problem encountered when the
particle size is close to the mesh size. It calculates local porosities using more computational
points and allows a higher CFD resolution for multi-size particles.
3) Sensitivity analyses are conducted to show the limited range of size ratio in coarse-grid CFD
DEM (i.e. SR 4) and the extended range owing to the use of porous sphere model (i.e. SR 1).
Future work will be continued on using the developed tool to understand the mechanism of more
complicated geotechnical engineering problems, such as grain segregation in debris ows and
riverbed erosion.
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79

ACKNOWLEDGEMENTS

The work was supported by Research Grants Council of Hong Kong (under RGC/GRF 17203614). The
forth author would like to acknowledge the support from FAP-DF, Brazil. The constructive comments of
the anonymous reviewers are also acknowledged.
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