Motion of a circular cylinder in a viscous liquid between parallel plates

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The two-dimensional motion of a cylinder in a viscous fluid between two parallel walls of a vertical channel is studied. It is found that when the cylinder moves very closely along one of the channel walls, it always rotates in the direction opposite to that of contact rolling along the nearest wall. When the cylinder is away from the walls, its rotation depends on the Reynolds number of the flow. In this study two numerical methods were used. One is for the unsteady motion of a sedimenting cylinder initially released from a position close to one of the channel walls, where the Navier-Stokes equations are solved for the fluid and Newton's equations of motion are solved for the rigid cylinder. The other method is for the steady flow in which a cylinder is fixed in a uniform flow field where the channel walls are sliding past the cylinder at the speed of the approaching flow, or equivalently a cylinder is moving with a constant velocity in a quiescent fluid. The flow field, the drag, the side force (lift), and the torque experienced by the cylinder are studied in detail. The effects of the cylinder location in the channel, the size of the channel relative to the cylinder diameter, and the Reynolds number of the flow are examined. In the limit when the cylinder is translating very closely along one of the walls, the flow in the gap between the cylinder and the wall is solved analytically using lubrication theory, and the numerical solution in the other region is used to piece together the whole flow field.