Study of turbulent flows loaded with particles. Application to the particulate fouling of corrugated plate heat exchangers

This work is a numerical and experimental study of the behaviour of a turbulent flow loaded with solid particles. It involves the particulate fouling of plate heat exchangers used in industrial field. Visual observation and LDA measurements inside a mock-up show the presence of large coherent vortices and confirm the tight link between particulate deposition and flow field. The vortices participate to the creation of preferential areas where the particles are in contact with the wall, and they shape the deposit according to a precise mechanism. Two processes of deposit removal have also been shown. Hydraulic phenomena and particles behaviours pointed out in the experiment are compared to different typical samples in a bibliographic survey. The use of the a software for computational fluid dynamics (TRIO developed at the Commissariat a l'Energie Atomique) completed the experimental results by predicting the particles behaviour into the turbulent flow. The approach is based on a connection between a pseudo-direct simulation of the turbulent flow and a Lagrangian model for particles paths. The results show good agreements, qualitatively speaking, between numerical predictions and experimental measurement. The arrangement of the deposit onto the corrugated surface is globally well described by numerical simulation. The influence of some parameters on deposition process such as the flow (corresponding to Re=5000 or Re=10000), the horizontal or vertical position of the channel or the particles diameter (d_p=100 μm or d_p=25 μm) has been studied. (author)