Tese: Coupling Machine Learning and Mesoscale Modeling to Study the flow of semi-dense and dense suspensions
Aluno(a) : Erika Imada BarcelosOrientador(a): Monica Naccache e João Maia
Área de Concentração: Termociências
Data: 31/01/2022
Link para tese/dissertação: https://doi.org/10.17771/PUCRio.acad.58901
Resumo: Suspensions correspond to a class of materials vastly used in a large set of applications and industries. Due to its extreme versatility, they have been the focus of numerous studies over the past decades. Suspensions are also very flexible and can display different rheological properties and macroscopic responses depending on the choice of parameters used as input in the system. More specifically, the rheological response of suspensions is intimately associated to the microstructural arrangement of the particles composing the medium and external factors, such as how strongly they are confined and particle rigidity. In the present study, the effect of particle rigidity, confinement, and flow rate on the microstructure of highly concentrated suspensions is studied using Core-Modified Dissipative Particle Dynamics. Preceding this main study, two other steps were necessary to guarantee a reliable and realistic simulation system, which consisted, essentially, on performing parametric studies to understand and estimate the appropriate values for wall-particle interaction parameters. Chapter 2 and Chapter 3 of the present work address parametric studies performed to assist the input parameters choice to prevent particle penetration in a wall-bounded system. In Chapter 2 a simpler system, composed of solvent and walls, is built and the interaction parameters and wall densities are adjusted. In Chapter 3 the interactions are set for suspensions. In the latter case multiple parameters play a role in penetration and the traditional way to investigate these effects would be exhaustive and time consuming. Hence, we choose to use a Machine Learning approach to perform this study. Once the parameters were adjusted, the study of confinement could be carried out, in Chapter 4. The main goal of this Chapter was to understand how the microstructure of concentrated suspensions is affected by flow rate, particle rigidity and confinement. It was found that very soft particles always form a giant cluster regardless the confinement ratio; the difference being on how packed the particles are. In the rigid case, a stronger confinement leads the formation of larger clusters. Chapter 5 addresses a machine learning study carried out to predict the rheology of unconfined suspensions. The main contribution of this work is that it was possible to understand and adjust simulation parameters that affect unrealistic the physics of the system and develop a computational domain that enables to systematically study confinement effects on suspensions.