Modeling the Evolution of Aeolian Sand Transport in a Wind Tunnel

An Eulerian-Lagrangian numerical simulation is performed to study aeolian sand transport in a wind tunnel. The evolutions of three parameters, sand mass flux decay rate of sand mass flux profile and sand particle mean horizontal velocity with time, are investigated. The results show that: Sand mass flux takes more time to reach the saturated state than the last two parameters. First, we prove the evolution with time in the simulation is similar to the evolution in the length direction in a wind tunnel and then the experimental data from unsaturated wind tunnel can be used in the quantitative comparison with simulated saturated results. Second, detailed comparison is carried out. The tendency of sand mass flux is consistent with the experimental data. Decay rate of sand mass flux profile and sand particle mean horizontal velocity fit the experimental data well especially for cases of small free stream wind velocity, and the deviation is getting larger with the increasing of free stream wind velocity.