Random Walk Particle Tracking to Model Dispersion in Steady Laminar and Turbulent Pipe Flow
Publication: Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 149, Issue 7
Abstract
To accurately model a two-dimensional solute transport in drinking water pipes and determine the effective dispersion coefficients for one-dimensional water quality models of water distribution systems, a random walk particle tracking approach was developed to analyze the advection and dispersion processes in circular pipes. The approach considers a solute particle’s two-dimensional random movement caused by molecular or turbulent diffusion and associated velocity profile, and can simulate any mixing time and accurately model the longitudinal distribution of the solute concentration. For long mixing times, the simulation results agreed with a previous analytically derived solution. For turbulent flow conditions, simulations showed that the longitudinal dispersion of the solute is very sensitive to the utilized cross-sectional velocity profiles. This approach is easy to implement programmatically and unconditionally stable. It can predict the mixing characteristics of a pipe under various initial and boundary conditions.
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Data Availability Statement
Data associated with this work is available from https://catalog.data.gov/dataset/epa-sciencehub. Please contact the corresponding author for any additional model or data needs.
Acknowledgments
Disclaimer
The US Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) through its Office of Research and Development funded the research described herein. It has been subjected to the Agency’s review and has been approved for publication. Note that approval does not signify that the contents necessarily reflect the views of the Agency. Any mention of trade names, products, or services does not imply an endorsement by the US Government or EPA. The EPA does not endorse any commercial products, services, or enterprises. The contractors’ role did not include establishing Agency policy.
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Journal of Hydraulic Engineering
Volume 149 • Issue 7 • July 2023
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© 2023 Published by American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 8, 2022
Accepted: Feb 28, 2023
Published online: May 8, 2023
Published in print: Jul 1, 2023
Discussion open until: Oct 8, 2023
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