Electrically induced suppression of turbophoresis in particle-laden wall-bounded turbulent flows

Turbophoresis is a ponderomotive effect whereby small inertial particles tend to drift toward the wall in wall-bounded turbulent flows. In this study, direct numerical simulations of incompressible turbulent channel flows laden with monodisperse small inertial particles are employed that illustrate the suppression of turbophoresis using external electric fields. An Eulerian/Lagrangian formulation is employed along with a fast multipole method for the electric potential conveniently corrected with boundary conditions. Characteristic regimes in the space of dimensionless parameters are identified where an AC electric field applied across the channel walls is capable of decreasing the time-averaged concentration of particles near the wall by two orders of magnitude.