Sedimentation of a sphere near a vertical wall in an Oldroyd-B fluid (Q1590455)

The major objective is to simulate the motion of a rigid sphere suspended in a shear thinning Oldroyd-B fluid, and to gain an understanding of forces that move the sphere closer to the wall. This has been achieved using the distributed Lagrange multiplier/fictitious domain method. In the second section of the paper the governing equations for shear thinning Oldroyd-B model and for the motion of a semimenting particle are given together with a brief description of the numerical method. In the next section the authors perform a convergence study, and discuss the results obtained for a particle sedimenting near a wall in Newtonian and Oldroyd-B liquids in both two and three dimensions. Among these results is that, when the initial position of the sphere is sufficiently close to the wall and its Deborah number is \(O(1)\), it moves towards the wall unlike the Newtonian case. In two dimensions, however, a sedimenting cylinder moves away from the wall in both viscoelastic and Newtonian liquids. The authors found good agreement with experimental observations in the case of the sphere sedimenting near the vertical wall.