A novel approach to computing the orientation moments of spheroids in simple shear flow at arbitrary Péclet number

Abstract

A Langevin approach to computing the orientation moments of a dilute suspension of spheroids in a simple shear flow at arbitrary Péclet number is presented. In this method we obtain the equations governing the time evolution of the orientation averages using a generalized Langevin equation approach and develop a computational technique for computing the evolution of the moments from these equations. These results are compared with those available in the literature obtained from other methods and show good agreement. The approach presented here can be easily generalized to a number of similar systems such as forced suspensions of dipolar particles in shear flows and can be applied to other flow problems governed by appropriate Fokker–Planck equations.