Back to Departmental Colloquium: Spring 2001
Departmental Colloquium
Date: Thursday, Jan 25, 2001
Time: 4:15PM
Location: JWB 335
Peter J. Mucha
MIT
Title |
Fluctuations and backflow in dilute sedimentation |
Abstract |
Sedimenting suspensions of monodisperse rigid spherical particles in a state of creeping flow are considered in the dilute limit, where only low-order particle-particle interactions are kept to simplify the dynamical equations. In this limit, O(N) codes can easily simulate more than 10^5 particles. Both periodic boundary conditions and systems with side walls are considered, and found to be fundamentally different. Results are compared with the Caflisch-Luke scaling for the particle velocity fluctuations. Estimates for the velocity fluctuations are semi-analytically obtained for side-wall systems, and found to agree with both simulations and dilute experiments. Results are further compared with recent experiments, and the roles of the external boundary conditions and backflow details are addressed. |
Dynamical Systems
Computational Mathematics
Applied Mathematics