Gravity induced sedimentation of slender fibers

Gravity induced sedimentation of slender, rigid fibers in a highly viscous fluid is investigated by large scale numerical simulations. The fiber suspension is considered on a microscopic level and the flow is described by the Stokes equations in a three dimensional periodic domain. Numerical simulations are performed to study in great detail the complex dynamics of a cluster of fibers. A repeating cycle is identified. It consists of two main phases: a densification phase, where the cluster densifies and grows, and a coarsening phase, during which the cluster becomes smaller and less dense. The dynamics of these phases and their relation to fluctuations in the sedimentation velocity are analyzed. Data from the simulations are also used to investigate how average fiber orientations and sedimentation velocities are influenced by the microstructure in the suspension. The dynamical behavior of the fiber suspension is very sensitive to small random differences in the initial configuration and a number of realizations of each numerical experiment are performed. Ensemble averages of the sedimentation velocity and fiber orientation are presented for different values of the effective concentration of fibers and the results are compared to experimental data. The numerical code is parallelized using the Message Passing Instructions (MPI) library and numerical simulations with up 800 fibers can be run for very long times which is crucial to reach steady levels of the averaged quantities. The influence of the periodic boundary conditions on the process is also carefully investigated.