An investigation into the behavior of non-isodense particles in chaotic thermovibrational flow

The ability to control the distribution of particles in a fluid is generally regarded as a factor of great importance in a variety of fields (manufacturing processes, biomedical applications, materials engineering and various particle separation processes, to cite a few). The present study considers the hitherto not yet addressed situation in which solid spherical particles are dispersed in a non-isothermal fluid undergoing turbulent vibrationally-induced convection (chaotic thermovibrational flow in a square cavity due to vibrations perpendicular to the imposed temperature difference). Although the possibility to use laminar thermovibrational flows (in microgravity) and turbulent flows of various types (in normal gravity conditions) to induce the accumulation of solid mass dispersed in a non-isodense fluid is already known, the interplay of finite-size finite-mass particles with chaotic flow in weightlessness conditions has never been considered. In the present study this subject is tackled through direct numerical solution of the fluid and particle tracking equations in the framework of a one-way coupling approach. Results are presented for relatively wide ranges of vibrational amplitude, particle size and density.