Inertial migration of a sphere in plane Couette flow

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Publication:6184945




Abstract: We study the inertial migration of a torque-free neutrally buoyant sphere in wall-bounded plane Couette flow over a wide range of channel Reynolds numbers, Rec, in the limit of small particle Reynolds number,(Repll1) and confinement ratio,(lambdall1). Here, Rec=VextwallH/u where H denotes the separation between the channel walls, Vextwall denotes the speed of the moving wall, and u is the kinematic viscosity of the Newtonian suspending fluid; lambda=a/H, a being the sphere radius, with Rep=lambda2Rec. The channel centerline is found to be the only (stable),equilibrium below a critical Rec,(approx148), consistent with the predictions of earlier small-Rec analyses. A supercritical pitchfork bifurcation at the critical Rec creates a pair of stable off-center equilibria, symmetrically located with respect to the centerline, with the original centerline equilibrium simultaneously becoming unstable. The new equilibria migrate wallward with increasing Rec. In contrast to the inference based on recent computations, the aforementioned bifurcation occurs for arbitrarily small Rep provided lambda is sufficiently small. An analogous bifurcation occurs in the two-dimensional scenario, that is, for a circular cylinder suspended freely in plane Couette flow, with the critical Rec being approximately 110.



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