Numerical simulation of the interaction between suspended sediment and moving plate based on the drift-flux model

In recent years, the research on deep-sea mining has become more and more popular, especially in the interaction between the harvesting system and seabed to estimate and minimize seabed disturbance. In this paper, an inclined plane is adopted to simplify the front of the nodule harvester, and a solver for simulating turbulent sediment transport and fluid-structure interaction is developed based on the drift-flux model in the OpenFOAM. The volume of fluid (VOF) algorithm is used to simulate the diffusion and sedimentation process of sediment in the water, and the kOmegaSST model is used to calculate the turbulent diffusion coefficient of the mixed solution. Two different dynamic mesh strategies, overset and arbitrarily coupled mesh interface (ACMI) methods, are used to simulate the movement of the tilting push plate. This paper compares the simulation results of two different strategies. The results show that under the same simulation accuracy, ACMI method is more reliable and efficient than overset method.