Numerical simulation of air–soil two-phase flow based on turbulence modeling

Abstract

Soil flow and induced air blasts are of great harm to humanity, and historically they have caused a lot of damage to infrastructure. However, these phenomena cannot be described by traditional analog modeling methods that limit their use in disaster prevention efforts. Computational fluid dynamics (CFD) is an applied technique commonly used in a range of fields including the chemical industry, and aircraft and automobile manufacturing, but little is reported on the use of this method to simulate flowing soil in geotechnical engineering applications. The CFD method can effectively make up for the deficiency of normal calculation methods in the analysis of soil flow and air blasts. This paper uses the FLUENT (version 6.3) CFD calculation software to simulate the processes of soil flow and induced air blast changes during soil flow with an Eulerian air-soil two-phase model included in a standard k-e turbulence model. Velocity vectors of air blasts at different times during soil flow are obtained, and the characteristics of turbulent flow can be found based on the velocity vectors. The numerical simulation techniques adopted in this paper captured precise configurations of soil flow. The results show that the CFD method is especially suitable for simulating the process of soil flow; hazard assessments can be implemented, and the performance of structures involved with disaster prevention can be improved based on the numerical simulation of changing air blasts.

A Systematic Review of the Relationship between Geotechnics and Disasters

“…Studies of geological and geotechnical parameters related to natural hazard susceptibility [152], earthquake damage assessment using remote sensing [153,154], methodologies applied to disaster mitigation and monitoring [10,[155][156][157], geotechnical investigations of earthquakes [158][159][160], post-disaster road reconstruction [27,161,162], slope stability [163][164][165], numerical simulations [166,167], mining activities [168][169][170], soft soils [171,172], landslides [173][174][175], dikes [176], dams [177][178][179], study of the geomechanical parameters of materials [180][181][182], soil liquefaction [183][184][185], seismic microzoning [186][187][188], permafrost hazard [189], damage to geotechnical structures due to tsunamis [12], sediment consolidation [190], soil improvement [191], and investigations in coastal areas [192]…”

Mechanical Properties of Tunnel Muck with Fly‐Ash Geopolymer

“…e main contents of the tunnel muck are gravel, sand, and clay with different amount of water. e instability of these geomaterials might trigger dreadful disasters [4,[8][9][10][11][12]. Hence, an efficient way to deposit or even to recycle the tunnel muck is of great significance to the environment.…”