Slow Motion of a Porous Eccentric Spherical Particle-in-Cell Models

Abstract

A combined analytical–numerical method is presented for the quasisteady axisymmetrical flow of an incompressible viscous fluid past an assemblage of porous eccentric spherical particle-in-cell models. The flow inside the porous particle is governed by the Brinkman model and the flow in the fictitious envelope region is governed by Stokes equations. In order to solve the Stokes equations for the flow field, a general solution is constructed from the superposition of the basic solutions in the two spherical coordinate systems based on both the porous particle and fictitious spherical envelope. Boundary conditions on the particle’s surface and fictitious spherical envelope that correspond to the Happel, Kuwabara, Kvashnin, and Cunningham/Mehta-Morse models are satisfied by a collocation technique. The drag of these eccentric porous particles relative to the drag experienced by a centered porous particle are investigated as functions of the effective distance between the center of the porous particle and the fictitious envelope, the volume ratio of the porous particle over the surrounding sphere and a coefficient that is proportional to the inverse of the permeability. In the limits of the motions of the porous particle in the concentric position with cell surface and near the cell surface with a small curvature, the numerical values of the normalized drag force are in good agreement with the available values in the literature.