The flow behavior of sand particles during the core shooting process has been studied by combination of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) simulations and experiments. In the CFD simulations, a two-fluid model (TFM), in which a kinetic-frictional constitutive correlation is incorporated, has been applied to describe the flow dynamics of core shooting process. The influences of turbulence model and boundary conditions on the modeling of core shooting process are further investigated. The simulation results indicate that there are certain sensitivities to the wall boundary condition in the sand flow behavior while no significant difference is observed between the results of the laminar and turbulence models. Using high-speed photography system and pressure measuring system, systematic experiments have been carried out to fully validate the model and good agreement is obtained between simulations and experiments. Based on the simulation and experimental results, the flow behavior of sand particles in the core box is analyzed, and the effects of nozzle dimension (D = 6, 8, 10, 15 mm) and shooting pressure (P-in = 03, 0.4, 0.5 MPa) on the hydrodynamic properties such as sand particle mass flux, sand volume fraction at the nozzle and distribution of sand velocity are discussed. (C) 2017 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.