Transport and Deposition of Large Aspect Ratio Prolate and Oblate Spheroidal Nanoparticles in Cross Flow

Abstract

The objective of this paper was to study the transport and deposition of non-spherical oblate and prolate shaped particles for the flow in a tube with a radial suction velocity field, with an application to experiments related to composite manufacturing. The transport of the non- spherical particles is governed by a convective diffusion equation for the probability density function, also called the Fokker–Planck equation, which is a function of the position and orientation angles. The flow is governed by the Stokes equation with an additional radial flow field. The concentration of particles is assumed to be dilute. In the solution of the Fokker–Planck equation, an expansion for small rotational Peclet numbers and large translational Peclet numbers is considered. The solution can be divided into an outer region and two boundary layer regions. The outer boundary layer region is governed by an angle-averaged convective-diffusion equation. The solution in the innermost boundary layer region is a diffusion equation including the radial variation and the orientation angles. Analytical deposition rates are calculated as a function of position along the tube axis. The contribution from the innermost boundary layer called steric- interception deposition is found to be very small. Higher order curvature and suction effects are found to increase deposition. The results are compared with results using a Lagrangian tracking method of the same flow configuration. When compared, the deposition rates are of the same order of magnitude, but the analytical results show a larger variation for different particle sizes. The results are also compared with numerical results, using the angle averaged convective-diffusion equation. The agreement between numerical and analytical results is good.