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Motion of asymmetric bodies in two-dimensional shear flow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  30 March 2022

James V. Roggeveen*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
Howard A. Stone*
Affiliation:
Department of Mechanical and Aerospace Engineering, Princeton University, Princeton, NJ 08540, USA
*
†Email addresses for correspondence: jamesvr@princeton.edu, hastone@princeton.edu
†Email addresses for correspondence: jamesvr@princeton.edu, hastone@princeton.edu

Abstract

At low Reynolds numbers, axisymmetric ellipsoidal particles immersed in a shear flow undergo periodic tumbling motions known as Jeffery orbits, with the orbit determined by the initial orientation. Understanding this motion is important for predicting the overall dynamics of a suspension. While slender fibres may follow Jeffery orbits, many such particles in nature are neither straight nor rigid. Recent work exploring the dynamics of curved or elastic fibres have found Jeffery-like behaviour along with chaotic orbits, decaying orbital constants and cross-streamline drift. Most work focuses on particles with reflectional symmetry; we instead consider the behaviour of a composite asymmetric slender body made of two straight rods, suspended in a two-dimensional shear flow, to understand the effects of the shape on the dynamics. We find that for certain geometries the particle does not rotate and undergoes persistent drift across streamlines, the magnitude of which is consistent with other previously identified forms of cross-streamline drift. For this class of particles, such geometry-driven cross-streamline motion may be important in giving rise to dispersion in channel flows, thereby potentially enhancing mixing.

Information

Type
JFM Papers
Creative Commons
Creative Common License - CCCreative Common License - BY
This is an Open Access article, distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution licence (http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted re-use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
Copyright
© The Author(s), 2022. Published by Cambridge University Press
Figure 0

Figure 1. Decomposition of a linear shear flow into a rotational component and a rate-of-strain component. The shear flow $\boldsymbol {u}^\infty (\boldsymbol {x}) = \dot {\gamma }y\boldsymbol {e}_1'$ may be written as $\boldsymbol {u}^\infty (\boldsymbol {x}) = \frac {1}{2}\boldsymbol {\omega }^\infty \wedge \boldsymbol {x} + {\boldsymbol{\mathsf{E}}}^\infty \boldsymbol {\cdot } \boldsymbol {x}$, where the values of $\boldsymbol {\omega }^\infty$ and ${\boldsymbol{\mathsf{E}}}^\infty$ are given in the figure relative to the $\boldsymbol {e}_1'-\boldsymbol {e}_2'-\boldsymbol {e}_3'$ laboratory reference frame. The dynamics of the particle in the shear flow is a linear combination of the particle's dynamics in each component flow. The flow decomposition for particles whose centre does not fall on $y=0$ will also include a constant velocity translation, $\boldsymbol {U}^\infty$, in the direction of the shear, as the decomposition into rotational and extensional components assumes that the particle's centre is located at $\boldsymbol {x}=\boldsymbol {0}$. However, for force and torque-free particles, $\boldsymbol {U}^\infty$ will serve only to advect the particle downstream.

Figure 1

Figure 2. The laboratory reference frame for a shear flow is defined such that $\boldsymbol {e}_1'$ is parallel to the streamlines, $\boldsymbol {e}_2'$ is parallel to the flow's gradient and $\boldsymbol {e}_3'$ is parallel to the vorticity. In this frame, a shear flow is written as $\boldsymbol {u}^\infty (\boldsymbol {x}) = \dot {\gamma }y\boldsymbol {e}_1'$. We also define a particle-fixed reference frame where the particle's axes, $\{\boldsymbol {e}_1, \boldsymbol {e}_2, \boldsymbol {e}_3 \}$ are defined conveniently for the particular geometry relative to some origin $O$. For a two-dimensional flow, the particle's $\boldsymbol {e}_3$ axis is defined such that $\boldsymbol {e}_3' = \boldsymbol {e}_3$, which allows the rotation angle $\theta (t)$ to completely describe the relationship between the two frames. For a particle where point $O$ does not fall on $y=0$ for the shear flow, it is possible to subtract a uniform background flow $\boldsymbol {U}^\infty$ to create the situation illustrated. For a force-free and couple-free particle, this background flow merely advects the particle downstream but does not affect the rotational dynamics.

Figure 2

Figure 3. Schematic of the asymmetric bent rod. The particle's reference frame is centred at the hinge point $O$, with the $\boldsymbol {e}_1$ axis extending parallel to one arm while the other arm is offset by an angle $\alpha$; the unit vector $\boldsymbol {e}_2$ is defined as shown. The parameter $q$ sets the asymmetry of the shape, with $q=0$ corresponding to a symmetric body while $q=1/2$ is a straight rod. The laboratory frame $\{\boldsymbol {e}_1',\boldsymbol {e}_2',\boldsymbol {e}_3' \}$ is defined consistent with figure 2. We consider the motion of this body in a two-dimensional shear flow, $\boldsymbol {u}^\infty = \dot {\gamma } y \boldsymbol {e}_1'$. As long as $\boldsymbol {e}_3 = \boldsymbol {e}_3'$, the dynamics of the bent rod in shear will be two-dimensional.

Figure 3

Figure 4. The grey region in $q{-}\alpha$ parameter space represents the bodies for which stable fixed points exist. In this region, the bent rod depicted in figure 3 will adopt a fixed orientation relative to the flow and drift across streamlines. We see that this behaviour only occurs for shapes with high asymmetry and a fairly small bend angle. Outside of this region, the bodies rotate continuously while experiencing periodic motion relative to the background flow. Shapes on the boundary of the region have a quasistable fixed point for $\theta =0$. Representative bodies for different areas of the phase diagram are included.

Figure 4

Figure 5. Illustrative stable and unstable orientations for an asymmetric rod with $q=0.4$ and $\alpha = {\rm \pi}/4$ shown relative to the background shear flow. The orientation angle for this shape, $\theta _0\approx 0.038$ has been exaggerated here for clarity. In general, the fixed points for the bent rod system are small deflections from an alignment with the long arm pointing in the direction of flow. Orientations (a) and (b) are stable with respect to perturbations while (c) and (d) are unstable. Orientations (a) and (c) will drift upward across streamlines while rods (b) and (d) will drift downward. Note that the angular separation between pairs of stable and unstable points is small, indicating that a disturbance towards the nearest unstable orientation need not be large to cause the particle to flip to the alternate stable fixed point.

Figure 5

Figure 6. Fixed orientation and drift: (a) steady-state angular displacement $\theta _0$ in radians and (b) magnitude of vertical drift $\tilde {U}_2$ for the bent rod shapes that satisfy the stability condition (see (2.21)). There are no stable states in the white areas of the graph. The angular displacements correspond to orientation (a) of figure 5 and are very small, indicating only a slight perturbation of the long arm of the rod from pointing in the direction of the streamlines. The deflection increases to a maximum away from values of $q$ and $\alpha$ that are close to a straight rod. The drift rate is maximized along the stability boundary. The drift rate is orders of magnitude smaller than the shear rate, but is similar in magnitude to the drift observed by Wang et al. (2012) for three-dimensional curved fibres, though owing to a different mechanism. Note that the angular displacements of (a) would be accompanied by a downward drift, with a magnitude given by (b). On both plots the maximum angular displacement is denoted with a star, and the shape corresponding to this maximum is shown in the inset in (a).

Figure 6

Figure 7. Variations in mobility coefficients $\hat {h}_{31}$ and $\hat {h}_{32}$ with bend angle $\alpha$ for (a) $q=0$ and (b) $q=0.2$. For $q$ near zero, the coefficient $\hat {h}_{32}$ has two zeros, which disappear as the magnitude of $q$ increases. For $q=0$, one zero of $\hat {h}_{32}$ occurs at the same value of $\alpha$ as a zero of $\hat {h}_{31}$. At this $\alpha _c = \cos ^{-1}(2\sqrt {3}-3)$ the bent rod has no preferred angle and rotates with a constant rotation rate. As $q$ grows, $\hat {h}_{32}$ grows, becoming completely positive for the entire range of $\alpha$. $\hat {h}_{32}$ approaches a value of 1 as $q$ approaches $1/2$ while $\hat {h}_{31}$ becomes positive but decreases in amplitude, approaching 0 as $q$ increases to 1/2.

Figure 7

Figure 8. Rotating dynamics: (a) preferred angle and (b) period of rotation for non-drifting bent rod geometries, with a few representative bent rod geometries included in (a). The bent rods tumble in the flow with a periodic vertical motion, similar to the scooping motions described by Wang et al. (2012) and Thorp & Lister (2019), with a particular angle $\theta _p$ toward which they are preferentially oriented for most of the period of rotation. Here, we plot the angle $\beta = \theta _p + \alpha /2$, which gives the preferred orientation of the bisector of the bent rod relative to the streamlines. For small $q$, the transition from $\beta = 0$ to $\beta = {\rm \pi}/2$ occurs in a small region around $\alpha _c$. As $q$ becomes larger, $\beta$ varies mostly with $\alpha$ as the preferred angle $\theta _p$ approaches zero. The period of rotation tends to be lower for shapes closer to the constant rotation rate, and increases by several orders of magnitude as the rod gets progressively more straight.