Shear flow over a particulate or fibrous plate (Q5936113)

The author studies a simple shear flow over a porous plate consisting of a planar array of particles as a model of flow over a membrane. The main objective is to compute the slip velocity defined with reference to the velocity profile far above the plate, and the drift velocity induced by the shear flow underneath the plate. The difference between these two velocities is shown to be proportional to the thickness of the plate. When the geometry of the partial array is anisotropic, the directions of slip and drift velocities are generally different from the direction of overpassing shear flow. An integral formulation is developed to describe the flow over a plate consisting of a periodic lattice of particles with arbitrary shape, and integral representations for velocity and pressure are given in terms of double-periodic Green's function of three-dimensional Stokes flow. Based on the integral representations, asymptotic expressions for slip and drift velocities are derived to describe the limit where the particle size is small compared to inter-particle separation. Numerical results are presented for spherical and spheroidal particles of arbitrary size. The asymptotic results are found to be accurate over an extended range of particle sizes.