Abstract
Flow behaviors of a non-Newtonian fluid in spherical microstructures have been studied by a direct numerical simulation. A shear-thinning (power-law) fluid through both regular and randomly packed spheres has been numerically investigated in a representative unit cell with the tri-periodic boundary condition, employing a rigorous three-dimensional finite-element scheme combined with fictitious-domain mortar-element methods. The present scheme has been validated for the classical spherical packing problems with literatures. The flow mobility of regular packing structures, including simple cubic (SC), body-centered cubic (BCC), face-centered cubic (FCC), as well as randomly packed spheres, has been investigated quantitatively by considering the amount of shear-thinning, the pressure gradient and the porosity as parameters. Furthermore, the mechanism leading to the main flow path in a highly shear-thinning fluid through randomly packed spheres has been discussed.
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Liu, H.L., Moon, J.S. & Hwang, W.R. Numerical simulation of a shear-thinning fluid through packed spheres. Korea-Aust. Rheol. J. 24, 297–306 (2012). https://doi.org/10.1007/s13367-012-0036-8
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s13367-012-0036-8