Relationship Between Macroscopic Rheological Properties and Microstructure of a Dilute Suspension by a Two-Way Coupling Numerical Scheme

The rheological properties of a suspension depend on particle shape, spatial arrangement of the particles and hydrodynamic interactions as well as the concentration of the particles. So far, we proposed a two-way coupling numerical scheme to evaluate the effects of particle rotation on the rheological properties. This particle rotation decreases the fluid resistance. However, these studies were conducted on the condition that suspended particles were homogeneously distributed. Therefore, the particles in this study are randomly scattered in a suspension for better practical applications. Pressure-driven suspension flow simulations were conducted to consider the effects of inertia on the relationship between spatial arrangement of the particles and the rheological properties of a suspension. The channel width and axial length were set 400 μm and 1620 μm, respectively, and periodic boundary conditions were applied in the flow direction. The rigid spherical particles whose diameter was 20 μm were randomly scattered in the channel as an initial condition. The concentration of the suspension was set 1.02% for dilute assumption, and the suspension flows with the Reynolds number from 2 to 128 were reproduced in order to investigate the inertial effects of the suspended particles on the rheological properties. The rheological properties of the suspension were evaluated in terms of power-law index (non-Newtonian index). The velocity profile of a suspension for low Reynolds number conditions exhibited almost parabolic. This indicates the suspension behaves as a Newtonian fluid. For higher Reynolds number conditions, on the other hand, the lift force on the particles increased and they migrated toward the equilibrium y-axis position, where the lift force is zero. These changes in the y-axis position of the particles caused a change in microstructure of the suspension, which were followed by a change in macroscopic rheological properties. Owing to these microstructure changes, the non-Newtonian (thixotropic) properties were enhanced as the Reynolds number increased.