CFD simulation of liquid-solid multiphase flow in mud mixer

Abstract

In the present study, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulation was performed to analyze the mixing phenomena associated with multi-phase flow in a mud mixing system. For the validation of CFD simulation, firstly a liquid-solid multiphase flow inside horizontal pipe was simulated and compared with the experiments and other numerical simulations. And then, the multiphase flow simulation was carried out for the mud mixer in the drilling handling system in order to understand mixing phenomena and predict the mixing efficiency. For the modeling and simulation, a commercial software, STAR-CCM+, based on a finite-volume method (FVM) was adopted. The simulation results for liquid-solid flow inside the pipe shows a good agreement with the experimental data. With the same multiphase model, the simulation for mud mixer is performed under the generalized boundary condition and then pressure drop through the mud mixer will be discussed.