A multilayer shallow water system for polydisperse sedimentation

This work considers the flow of a fluid containing one disperse substance consisting of small particles that belong to different species differing in size and density. The flow is modelled by combining a multilayer shallow water approach with a polydisperse sedimentation process. This technique allows one to keep information on the vertical distribution of the solid particles in the mixture, and thereby to model the segregation of the particle species from each other, and from the fluid, taking place in the vertical direction of the gravity body force only. This polydisperse sedimentation process is described by the well-known Masliyah-Lockett-Bassoon (MLB) velocity functions. The resulting multilayer sedimentation-flow model can be written as a hyperbolic system with nonconservative products. The definitions of the nonconservative products are related to the hydrostatic pressure and to the mass and momentum hydrodynamic transfer terms between the layers. For the numerical discretization a strategy of two steps is proposed, where the first one is also divided into two parts. In the first step, instead of approximating the complete model, we approximate a reduced model with a smaller number of unknowns. Then, taking advantage of the fact that the concentrations are passive scalars in the system, we approximate the concentrations of the different species by an upwind scheme related to the numerical flux of the total concentration. In the second step, the effect of the transference terms defined in terms of the MLB model is introduced. These transfer terms are approximated by using a numerical flux function used to discretize the 1D vertical polydisperse model (see Bürger, Garćıa, Karlsen and Towers, J. Eng. Math. 60 (2008), 387–425). Finally, some numerical examples are presented. Numerical results suggest that the multilayer shallow water model could be adequate in situations where the settling takes place from a suspension that undergoes horizontal movement.