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The lift on a small sphere in a slow shear flow

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  28 March 2006

P. G. Saffman
Affiliation:
California Institute of Technology, Pasadena, California

Abstract

It is shown that a sphere moving through a very viscous liquid with velocity V relative to a uniform simple shear, the translation velocity being parallel to the streamlines and measured relative to the streamline through the centre, experiences a lift force 81·2μVa2k½/v½ + smaller terms perpendicular to the flow direction, which acts to deflect the particle towards the streamlines moving in the direction opposite to V. Here, a denotes the radius of the sphere, κ the magnitude of the velocity gradient, and μ and v the viscosity and kinematic viscosity, respectively. The relevance of the result to the observations by Segrée & Silberberg (1962) of small spheres in Poiseuille flow is discussed briefly. Comments are also made about the problem of a sphere in a parabolic velocity profile and the functional dependence of the lift upon the parameters is obtained.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1965 Cambridge University Press

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