is it possible to simulate interaction between two solid particles ported by a fluid with COMSOL Multiphysics ?
I tried with the particles tracking module butt it seems that the particles pass through each other which is not logical since there should be a collision between them which lead to change their directions and their velocities
Yes you can try by using the tracking strategy of multiagent system (multi-particles) if you have dynamical model of the particle. Even though you can also do with point dynamic as per my opinion.
In COMSOL's particle tracing module particles are treated as points, not physical spheres. Even though you enter a radius for them, this value is used just to calculate momentum and forces (e.g. gravity, drag, etc.) rather than physically constructing a sphere. For this reason COMSOL particles can be closer to another object (be it a boundary or another particle) than their radius. In my paper (Article Red blood cell and white blood cell separation using a later...
) I had to define a kind of virtual boundary to simulate particles sticking to the wall.Now there is Particle-Particle Interaction that you can enable, but that also does not account for individual spheres colliding (e.g. read the first point here: https://doc.comsol.com/5.4/doc/com.comsol.help.particle/IntroductionToParticleTracingModule.pdf#page=16). It just takes into account the forces between point particles (e.g. if they are charged), as well as bulk effect of having many particles in a fluidic region.
If you need collision between your particles then you may have to use your own trick. Maybe define a custom force between particles that acts only when their center-to-center distance is very close to the sum of their radii...
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