Influence of the Entrance Region on Particle Capture During Transport Through a Crack

Abstract

A numerical study was performed of particle capture in the entrance region of a crack, with computational domain consisting of the crack channel and inlet and exit reservoirs that are much larger than the channel width. The simulations examined different mechanisms for particle capture within the channel entrance region, including collision on the inlet reservoir wall just outside the crack channel, collision within the crack channel due to cross-stream inertia imparted by the entrance flow, collision induced by Brownian diffusion both on the inlet reservoir wall outside of the channel and within the channel, and gravitational collision within the channel. A detailed study of the variation of the entrance penetration factor with parameters such as the Stokes, Peclet, and Froude numbers was performed, and comparison of the numerical predictions with different theoretical expressions was made when the latter were available. Validity of the assumption of penetration factor independence was also examined for ...