Numerical simulation of aerosol collection in filters with staggered parallel rectangular fibres

S. Chen, Chun Shun Cheung, C. K. Chan, C. Zhu

Research output: Journal article publicationJournal articleAcademic researchpeer-review

33 Citations (Scopus)

Abstract

In this paper, filters with rectangular fibres arranged in a staggered and parallel array and placed transverse to the flow are studied numerically. A two-dimensional flow field is obtained by solving Navier-Stokes equations with the control volume method. Periodic boundary conditions are introduced in the calculation. In order to achieve higher accuracy, a second-order upwind scheme is adopted and a fine mesh is arranged near the fibre and the symmetrical plane of the flow field where large gradients in velocity are expected. Particle trajectories are calculated by solving the corresponding Lagrangian equation of motion to obtain the collection efficiency of a single rectangular fibre, in which positions of the approaching particles on the inlet plane of the flow field are randomly distributed according to the Monte-Carlo principle. The simulation considers all the important mechanisms of particle capture including interception, inertial impaction and Brownian motion. Effects of fibre aspect ratio, filter packing density, particulate size and Reynolds number on the collection efficiency are numerically determined. The volumetric packing density ranges from 0.4 to 4% and the particle diameter is from 0.01 μm to 2 μm. Reynolds number based on the height of computational domain varies from 20 to 100 and the aspect ratio is from 0.1 to 10. Simulations with and without Brownian motion are carried out for different Reynolds numbers, packing densities and aspect ratios and the results show that Brownian effects are significant for particles smaller than 1 μm.
Original languageEnglish
Pages (from-to)152-161
Number of pages10
JournalComputational Mechanics
Volume28
Issue number2
DOIs
Publication statusPublished - 1 Jan 2002

ASJC Scopus subject areas

  • Ocean Engineering
  • Mechanical Engineering
  • Computational Theory and Mathematics
  • Computational Mathematics
  • Applied Mathematics

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