Study of the free surface flow of water-kaolinite mixture by moving particle semi-implicit (MPS) method

Abstract

SUMMARY: The flow of water-kaolinite mixtures exhibits a non-Newtonian nature that differs from the flow of Newtonian fluid. The varying viscosities and shear history of non-Newtonian fluid flows necessitate the use of a rheology model in moving particle semi-implicit (MPS) for the numerical studies. On the other hand, the Lagrangian method has the advantage of handling free surface flows with large deformation and fragmentation. This study proposes a mesh-free Lagrangian method, namely, the MPS method, together with a simple rheology model to investigate the non-Newtonian free surface flows. The rheological parameters required in the rheology model are determined based upon experiments. The proposed method is applied to a water-kaolinite mixture collapse problem and is proved to be capable of reproducing the significant flow features observed in laboratory experiments. © 2013 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.