The Chemkin Particle Tracking feature uses the method of moments to determine statistics of the particle-size distribution, such as mean particle diameter and standard deviation, during a combustion simulation. Ansys has developed an Application Programming Interface (API) to the Particle Tracking capability with documented calling sequences that allow particle size distributions to be tracked by a third-party program through a series of routine calls. The calling program needs to transport the moment equations for the size distributions, while the particle-tracking module determines the particle nucleation from gas-phase precursors, the growth of particles from gas-particle interactions, and the oxidation of particles. These processes depend on detailed kinetics descriptions of the gas-particle system.

The extension of Ansys KINetics for the Particle Tracking feature consists of two parts that correspond to two use cases. In both cases, the Particle Tracking feature is initialized for chemistry sets containing dispersed materials.

The first part provides source terms of the moments equations and transport properties of the particles. It is employed when you have your own particle tracking model that uses moments equations. In this case you can use the API to obtain source terms of the moments equations and transport properties of the particles.

The second part implements the moments equations in the cell calculations for the API. This is useful when you want to make use of Ansys’ implementation of the particle tracking model based on moment equations. In this case you can include particle tracking in cell chemistry calculations for CFD and obtain solutions for gas-phase species and moments from the API.

For the mathematical details of the moments equations and physical properties, see Particle Size-Distribution Tracking in the Chemkin Theory Manual.