Spreading fronts in sedimentation of dilute suspension of spheres

Daniel Chehata Gomez (1) , Laurence Bergougnoux (1) , Elisabeth Guazzelli (1) , E. John Hinch (2)

1 IUSTI - Institut universitaire des systèmes thermiques industriels
2 DAMTP - Department of Applied Mathematics and Theoretical Physics

The thickness of the diffuse front between a sedimenting dilute suspension and the clear fluid above grows linearly in time due to polydispersity in the size of the particles and due to a hydrodynamic effect in which randomly heavy clusters fall out of the front leaving it depleted. Experiments and simplified point-particle numerical simulations agree that these two effects are not simply linearly additive.

Domaines: Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]; Mécanique des fluides [physics.class-ph]

Daniel Chehata Gomez, Laurence Bergougnoux, Elisabeth Guazzelli, E. John Hinch. Spreading fronts in sedimentation of dilute suspension of spheres. Physics of Fluids, 2008, 20, pp.023302. ⟨10.1063/1.2883960⟩. ⟨hal-01066988⟩