An analysis of non-colloid suspended particles in a Newtonian fluid over porous media

Abstract

Transport of suspension particles over porous media occurs in many industrial and environmental processes such as filtering and sedimentation. Among these applications, flow of red blood cells over EGL has received considerable attention in the recent years. In this paper, by considering EGL as a porous mesh, we present the fundamental physics of suspensions of particles at various suspension concentrations over porous layers. We quantitatively examine the flow of mono-disperse non-colloidal suspensions over a porous medium by developing an analytical framework to model the flow in a channel where the lower surface was replaced by various porous media. The model validated by comparing the predictions of the flow at low suspension concentrations with the flow of pure Newtonian fluid over a porous layer and a good agreement was found. We showed that the volumetric flow rate induced by the presence of porous media depends on the values of the permeability parameter α=LK, the thickness ratio δ=HL, and the concentration of the suspension flow ϕ where L is the half-thickness of the free flow region, H is the thickness of the porous layer, and K is the permeability of the porous layer. Furthermore, the velocity and shear stress profiles for the flow over the permeable layer were examined for the limiting cases of α→0 and α→∞.