Numerical simulation of smoke clearing with nanoparticle aggregates

Smoke reduction processes in an indoor room‐scale chamber are generated by injecting nanoparticle aggregates. A numerical model, with a flow solver implemented with a particle collision model, is used to simulate the smoke‐reduction effect. The collision model, developed particularly for simulating collisions among particles with significantly different sizes, enables real‐time simulations of three‐dimensional, two‐phase flow when flow/particle interactions need to be considered. The accuracy of the collision model is estimated by comparing with the exact solution from the Smoluchowski equation. The simulated smoke reduction results are compared with measured data with good agreement. Optimized particle size distributions are studied using the simulation. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.