Free falling of nonspherical particles in Newtonian fluids, B: Acceleration

Abstract

The acceleration length of nonspherical particles is required for various aspects of system design. However, no simple or usable equations can be found in literature. Therefore, this study is designed to show that the force balance developed earlier for spherical particles, including the new exponential function for the history force, is also valid for nonspherical particles. To achieve this, a new history force parameter definition considering sphericity has been developed based on numerous experiments. The experimental results confirm the definitions of particle acceleration and velocity of nonspherical particles. The acceleration length can be described as a function of the Archimedes number, density ratio, and particle diameter by analogy to spherical particles, considering the terminal Reynolds number, drag coefficient, and history force parameter as functions of the sphericity. In most cases, the acceleration length describes the experiments well, but it is less accurate for cases of orientation change during acceleration.