On the rotation of a circular porous particle in 2D simple shear flow with fluid inertia

Abstract

We investigate numerically the rotational behaviour of a circular porous particle suspended in a two-dimensional (2D) simple shear flow with fluid inertia at particle shear Reynolds number up to 108. We use the volume-averaged macroscopic momentum equation to formulate the flow field inside and outside the moving porous particle, which is solved by a modified single relaxation time lattice Boltzmann method. The effects of fluid inertia, confinement of the bounding walls, and permeability of the particle are studied. Our two-dimensional simulation results confirm that the permeability has little effect on the rotation of a porous particle in unbounded shear flow without fluid inertia (Masoud, Stone & Shelley, J. Fluid Mech., vol. 733, 2013, R6), but also suggest that the role of permeability cannot be neglected when the confinement effect is significant, or the fluid inertia is not negligible. The fluid inertia and the confined walls have similar effects on the rotation of a porous particle as that on a solid impermeable particle. The angular velocity decays with an increase in fluid inertia, and the confinement effect suppresses the angular velocity to a shear rate ratio below 0.5. A simple scaling argument based on the balance of torque exerted by fluid flows adjacent to the two bounding walls and that due to the flow recirculation can explain our results.