Fluid Flow in Composite Regions Past a Solid Sphere

Abstract

A steady, 2-D, incompressible, viscous fluid flow past a stationary solid sphere of radius 'a' has been considered. The flow of fluid occurs in 3 regions, namely fluid, porous and fluid regions. The governing equations for fluid flow in the clear and porous regions are Stokes and Brinkman equations, respectively. These governing equations are written in terms of stream function in the spherical coordinate system and solved using the similarity transformation method. The variation in flow patterns by means of streamlines has been analyzed for the obtained exact solution. The nature of the streamlines and the corresponding tangential and normal velocity profiles are observed graphically for the different values of porous parameter 'σ'. From the obtained results, it is noticed that an increase in porous parameters suppresses the fluid flow in the porous region due to less permeability; as a result, the fluid moves away from the solid sphere. It also decreases the velocity of the fluid in the porous region due to the suppression of the fluid as 'σ' increases. Hence the parabolic velocity profile is noticed near the solid sphere.