This work develops new force and torque correlations for dust particles with the goal of informing the design of aircraft engines. A common issue in aviation is the ingestion of small particles of dust and sand into the engine. To counteract this, engineers equip the engine inlets with particle separators, which filter out particles from the airstream. Separators are designed and tested based on computational fluid dynamics (CFD) analysis of particle trajectories. However, these CFD models lack important physics for correctly predicting the trajectory of dust particles, which are 1) nonspherical in shape and 2) typically rotating in the air. This work develops new correlations for lift and drag on nonspherical, rotating particles. It is shown that traditional drag models for nonrotating particles predict the drag well for low rotation rates; however, they cannot accurately predict the dynamics of quickly rotating particles. Lift and torque correlations are developed and discussed. The use of variable area rather than constant reference area in the computation of the aerodynamic coefficients is investigated. It is found that the effect of rotation on the drag coefficient is well replicated through this approach, whereas lift and torque coefficients cannot be predicted this way.
Miranda et al. (Fri,) studied this question.