Fluid-particle transport systems present a significant practical relevance, in several engineering applications, such as oil
sands mining and polymer processing. In several cases it is essential to consider that the fluid, in which the particles are
dispersed, has underlying viscoelastic characteristics. For this aim, a novel numerical algorithm was implemented on an
open-source finite-volume viscoelastic fluid flow solver coupled with an immersed boundary method, by extending the
open-source computational fluid dynamics library CFDEMcoupling. The code is able to perform fully-resolved
simulations, wherein all flow scales, associated with the particle motion, are resolved. Additionally, the formulation
employed exploits the log-conformation tensor approach, to avoid high Weissenberg number issues. The accuracy of
the algorithm was evaluated by studying several benchmark flows, namely: (i) the sedimentation of a sphere in a
bounded domain; (ii) rotation of a sphere in simple shear flow; (iii) the cross-stream migration of a neutrally buoyant
sphere in a steady Poiseuille flow. In each case, a comparison of the results obtained with the newly developed code
with data reported in the literature is performed, in order to assess the code accuracy and robustness. Finally, the
capability of the code to solve a physical challenging problem is illustrated by studying the interactions and flowinduced alignment of three spheres in a wall-bounded shear flow. The role of the fluid rheology and finite gap size on
both the approach rate and pathways of the solid particles are described [1].This work is funded by FEDER funds through the COMPETE 2020 Programme and National Funds through FCT - Portuguese Foundation for Science and Technology under the project UID/CTM/50025/2013. The authors would like to acknowledge the Minho University cluster under the project Search-ON2: Revitalization of HPC infrastructure of UMinho (NORTE-07-0162-FEDER-000086), co-funded by the North Portugal Regional Operational Programme (ON.2-0 Novo Norte), under the National Strategic Reference Framework (NSRF), through the European Regional Development Fund (ERDF)
