Simulation of windblown sand movement by discrete particle model

Numerical simulation of windblown sand gas-solid two-phase flow is performed with discrete particle model. In the model, the gas phase is described by the volume-averaged Navier-Stokes equations of two-phase flow. The particle motion is obtained by solving Newton's second law of motion. The hard sphere model is used to describe inter-particle collisions. The results show that, the variation of mean horizontal velocity of the sands with height can be expressed by a logarithmical function or a power function above 0.02 m and a deviation is shown below 0.02 m. The sand mass flux decreases exponentially with height above 0.02 m, but there is a deviation from the exponential decay due to the creep grains in the near-bed region. The present simulation is helpful to reveal the mechanism of windblown sand movement.