[steinar]

I would appreciate some recommendations for choosing a CFD software for modelling dense suspensions.

My application is flow of water and drilled cuttings (stone particles generated by a drill bit) in a closed system. The cuttings have a wide size distribution, from 2 mm down to 0.1 micron, and have a specific density of roughly 2700 kg m3. The solids content in the slurry is from a few percent to more than 30 percent, thus the fluid can display highly non-Newtonian properties. I’m both interested in modelling low Reynolds number flows and high Reynolds number flows.

My company have access to COMSOL Multiphysics, and I have looked into the mixture module for two phase flow. I have also used the non-Newtonian flow module to fit the rheological models we have from viscometry test. However, I have the feeling that COMSOL is too “soft” for my application, and it doesn’t seem to handle complex geometries and complex fluid behaviour which is relevant for me…

[gpbacker]

You are welcome to try WRAFTS (www.wrafts.com). I wrote it for foundry
mold filling applications, but I have used it for many other CFD problems,
including suspensions. It is FEM, so it handles complex geometries, and
it is efficient enough to work on multi-million element models.