Shear-induced particle migration in the flow of particle suspensions through a sudden plane expansion

This work investigates the creeping flow of particle suspensions through an abrupt 1: 4 plane expansion. The suspension is composed by non-Brownian, rigid spherical particles suspended in a viscous Newtonian liquid. The flow is described by mass and momentum conservation equations together with a convection-diffusion transport equation that accounts for shear-induced particle migration according to the diffusive flux model. The resulting set of fully coupled, nonlinear differential equations is solved with a stabilized finite element method. A detailed parametric study is presented in terms of suspension bulk concentration, particle Peclet number and ratio of diffusivity coefficients, and the numerical results show significant effects of these parameters on the particle concentration field in the flow.