Fiber orientation and dispersion in the dilute fiber suspension that flows through a T-shaped branching channel are simulated numerically based on the slender-body theory. The simulated results are consistent qualitatively with the experimental data available in the literature. The results show that the spatial distribution of fibers is dependent on the fiber aspect ratio, but has no relation with the volume fraction of fiber. The content ratio of fibers near the upper wall increases monotonically with an increasing Re number, and the situation is reverse for the region near the bottom wall. The orientation of fibers depends on Re number, however, the function of fiber volume fraction and aspect ratio is negligible. The fibers near the wall and in the central region of the channel align along the flow direction at all times, but the fibers in the other parts of the channel tend to align along the flow direction only in the downstream region.
Coagulation and growth of nanoparticles subject to large coherent structures in a planar jet has been explored by using large eddy simulation. The particle field is obtained by employing a moment method to approximate the nanoparticle general dynamic equa- tion. An incompressible fluid containing particles of 1 nm in diameter is projected into a particle-free ambient. The results show that the coherent structures dominate the evolution of the nanoparticle number intensity, diameter and polydispersity distributions as the jet develops. In addition, the coherent structures act to increase the diffusion of particles, and the vortex rolling-up makes the particles distributing more irregularly while the vortex pairing causes particle distributions to become uniform. As the jet travels downstream, the time-averaged particle number concentration becomes lower in the jet core and higher in the outskirts, whereas the time- averaged particle mass over the entire flow field maintains unaltered, and the time-averaged particle diameter and geometric standard deviations grow and reach their maximum on the interface of the jet region and the ambient.
Drag reduction features in the transition regime of channel flow with fibre suspension were analyzed in terms of the linear stability theory. The modified stability equation was obtained based on the slender-body theory and natural closure approximation. Results of the stability analysis show attenuating effects of fibre additives to the flow instability. For the cases leading to transition, drag reduction rate increases with the characteristic parameter H of fibres. The mechanism of drag reduction by fibres is revealed through the variation of velocity profile and the decrease of wall shear stress. The theoretical results are qualitatively consistent with some typical experiments.
The equation of two-dimensional fiber direction vector was solved theoretically to give the fiber orientation distri- bution in simple shear flow, flow with two direction shears, extensional flow and arbitrary planar incompressible flow. The Fok- ker-Planck equation was solved numerically to validify the theoretical solutions. The stable orientation and orientation period of fiber were obtained. The results showed that the fiber orientation distribution is dependent on the relative not absolute magnitude of the matrix rate-of-strain of flow. The effect of fiber aspect ratio on the orientation distribution of fiber is insignificant in most conditions except the simple shear case. It was proved that the results for a planar flow could be generalized to the case of 3-D fiber direction vector.
