Dynamics of a pair of neutrally buoyant circular particles with different sizes in a lid-driven square cavity

Abstract

The solid particles with different sizes exist widely, like cell separation, food processing, water treatment, thus, investigating the motion of the solid particles with different sizes is important. This study investigates the motion of a pair of neutrally buoyant circular particles with different sizes in a lid-driven square cavity using the lattice Boltzmann method. The motion of the circular particles with different sizes and that of the circular particles with identical sizes are quite different. The steady trajectories of the circular particles with identical sizes are identical, which is not affected by the Reynolds number. Differently, the circular particles with different sizes orbit along different steady trajectories, namely, the steady trajectory of the small particle is closer to the walls of the square cavity, while that of the large particle shrinks toward the center of the square cavity, which may provide us a possible method to separate them. However, it is not always effective, if the Reynolds number is low, the velocity difference between the circular particles with different sizes is small, which may fail to separate them completely.