SURFACE VELOCITY CONTOUR ANALISYS IN THE AIRBORNE DUST GENERATION DUE TO OPEN STORAGE

Key words: Computational fluid dynamics, storage piles, airborne dust, dust emission Abstract. In the framework of the Research Project CTM2005-00187/TECNO, “Prediction models and prevention systems in the particle atmospheric contamination in an industrial environment ” of the Spanish National R+D Plan of the Ministry of Education and Science, 2004-2007 period, there have been developed several CFD models to simulate particulated material emission from mineral stockpiles. US EPA regulation determines the influence of the wind in the pile surface through tables and figures obtained from several tests done in atmospheric wind tunnels, depending on two typical shapes of stockpiles: a cone and a flat top pile. In order to create a computer based system that obtains the particulated material emission factor, CFD was selected as the way to simulate the effect of wind gusts in the pile surface. Several models were developed using the commercial code Ansys CFX 10.0, starting from several 3-D meshes of different resolutions generated using ICEM CFD 10.0. There were selected medium complexity turbulence models in order to obtain affordable resolution times in single processor machines, as well as following advices contained in related bibliography. These models were: k-epsilon (with and without surface roughness) and k-w based Shear-Stress-Transport (SST), combined with different logarithmic and plain wind profiles. Results were compared against the experimental data included within EPA and the best fit was obtained with a roughness k-epsilon model using a logarithmic wind profile