Helical flow of a Bingham fluid arising from axial Poiseuille flow between coaxial cylinders

Abstract

• Equations of motion are obtained for helical flow of a Bingham fluid with a floating core between coaxial concentric cylinders. • A small dimensionless parameter m intrinsic to the flow is identified. • Perturbation methods based on small m are applied to obtain approximations to the fluid flow field and related quantities. • These expressions are compared with the results of numerical calculations. The Bingham fluid model represents viscoplastic materials that display yielding , that is, behave as a solid body at low stresses, but flow as a Newtonian fluid at high stresses. In any Bingham flow, there may be regions of solid material separated from regions of Newtonian flow by so-called yield boundaries . Such materials arise in a range of industrial applications. Here, we consider the helical flow of a Bingham fluid between infinitely long coaxial cylinders, where the flow arises from the imposition of a steady rotation of the inner cylinder (annular Coutte flow) on a steady axial pressure driven flow (Poiseuille flow), where the ratio of the rotational flow compared to the axial flow is small. We apply a perturbation procedure to obtain approximate analytic expressions for the fluid velocity field and such related quantities as the stress and viscosity profiles in the flow. In particular, we examine the location of yield boundaries in the flow and how these vary with the rotation speed of the inner cylinder and other flow parameters. These analytic results are shown to agree very well with the results of numerical computations.