Kjetil Thøgersen (University of Oslo)

Direct modeling of particle suspensions

Modeling particle suspensions in incompressible fluids is of interest in fields ranging from crystal rich magmatic intrusions to swimming microbes and flow of proppant packings. This is a particularly challenging task when modeling the regime of large volume fractions, which is dominated by particle interactions. We present an adaptive unstructured finite element model for two-dimensional particle-laden flows at low Reynolds numbers, and show how the close particle interactions can be upscaled using Schur complements and lubrication theory. We then present a few examples of what the model is used for, including effective viscosity, shear induced mixing and particle dispersion.