Numerical investigation of spatially nonhomogeneous acoustic agglomeration using sectional algorithm

Abstract

In the simulation of acoustic agglomeration, the conventional temporal model assumes spatial homogeneity in aerosol properties and sound field, which is often not the case in real applications. In this article, we investigated the effects of spatial nonhomogeneity of sound field on the acoustic agglomeration process through a one-dimensional spatial sectional model. The spatial sectional model is validated against existing experimental data and results indicate lower requirements on the number of sections and better accuracy. Two typical cases of spatial nonhomogeneous acoustic agglomeration are studied by the established model. The first case involves acoustic agglomeration in a standing wave field with spatial alternation of acoustic kernels from nodes to antinodes. The good agreement between the simulation and experiments demonstrates the predictive capability of the present spatial sectional model for the standing-conditioned agglomeration. The second case incorporates sound attenuation in the particulate medium into acoustic agglomeration. Results indicate that sound attenuation can influence acoustic agglomeration significantly, particularly at high frequencies, and neglecting the effects of sound attenuation can cause overprediction of agglomeration rates. The present investigation demonstrates that the spatial sectional method is capable of simulating the spatially nonhomogeneous acoustic agglomeration with high computation efficiency and numerical robustness and the coupling with flow dynamics will be the goal of future work.