Consolidation of concentrated suspensions – numerical simulations using a two-phase fluid model

We investigate numerically a mathematical model of a consolidation process of a dense, flocculated suspension. The suspension is treated as a two-constituent mixture of a fluid and solid particles by an Eulerian two-phase fluid model. We characterize the suspension by constitutive relations concerning the stresses, interaction forces and inter-particle forces. A numerical solver for a two dimensional test case is developed using finite difference methods both in time and space. In the numerical experiments, the suspension is confined to a closed box and consolidates due to a constant gravity field directed toward the bottom. To study the effect of shear, 2D simulations are performed where the bottom wall of the box is moving with a constant speed.