Slip velocity of rigid fibers in turbulent channel flow

In this study, the slip velocity between rigid fibers and a viscous carrier fluid is investigated for the reference case of turbulent channel flow. The statistical moments of the slip velocity are evaluated modelling fibers as prolate spheroids with Stokes number, St, ranging from 1 to 100 and aspect ratio, lambda, ranging from 3 to 50. Statistics are compared one-to-one with those obtained for spherical particles (lambda = 1) to highlight effects due to fiber elongation. Comparison is also made at different Reynolds numbers (Re-tau = 150, 180, and 300 based on the fluid shear velocity) to discuss effects due to an increase of turbulent fluctuations. Results show that elongation has a quantitative effect on slip velocity statistics, particularly evident for fibers with small St. As St increases, differences due to the aspect ratio tend to vanish and the relative translational motion between individual fibers and surrounding fluid is controlled by fiber inertia through preferential concentration. A clear manifestation of inertial effects is the different distribution of slip velocities for fibers trapped in sweep/ejection events and for fibers segregated in near-wall fluid streaks. The corresponding conditional probability distribution functions, shown here for the stream wise and wall-normal slip velocity components, are found to be non-Gaussian, thus suggesting that fiber motion relative to the fluid in high-shear flow regions may not be modelled as a pure diffusion process with constant diffusion coefficient. For the range of simulation parameters investigated, no significant Reynolds number effects are observed, indicating that fiber dynamics exhibit a scaling behavior with respect to the shear velocity up to Re-tau = 300. (C) 2014 AIP Publishing LLC.