화학공학소재연구정보센터
Journal of Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics, Vol.211, 62-69, 2014
Dynamics of aggregating particulate suspensions in the microchannel flow of 4:1 planar contraction
The microchannel flow of complex fluids has drawn wide attention due to possible applications to high end technologies. But its physics has rarely been understood due to the difficulties in getting the microstructural change of the complex fluids during the flow in confined complex geometries. To understand the characteristics of these complex flows, we studied the dynamics of aggregating particle suspensions in three dimensional 4:1 contraction flow using the self-consistent particle simulation method. It combines both Brownian dynamics and finite element methods self-consistently, which enables to consider long-range hydrodynamic interaction effectively. We observed heterogeneous cluster formation and analyzed it in terms of the competition between flow and interparticle forces. In addition, spatio-temporal fluctuation which originates from the microstructural change and its interaction with the flow was observed. The fluctuation was complex with no characteristic periodicity or pattern. Heterogeneous structure formation and spatio-temporal fluctuation were found to be the main factors that characterize the complex flow of the particulate suspensions in the micro-contraction channel flow. (C) 2014 Elsevier B.V. All rights reserved.