English

The wall shear rate distribution for flow in random sphere packings

Soft Condensed Matter 2009-11-13 v2 Statistical Mechanics

Abstract

The wall shear rate distribution P(gamma) is investigated for pressure-driven Stokes flow through random arrangements of spheres at packing fractions 0.1 <= phi <= 0.64. For dense packings, P(gamma) is monotonic and approximately exponential. As phi --> 0.1, P(gamma) picks up additional structure which corresponds to the flow around isolated spheres, for which an exact result can be obtained. A simple expression for the mean wall shear rate is presented, based on a force-balance argument.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.0706.2820,
  title  = {The wall shear rate distribution for flow in random sphere packings},
  author = {Patrick B. Warren and Frantisek Stepanek},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:0706.2820},
  year   = {2009}
}
R2 v1 2026-06-21T08:39:56.701Z