Orientation and rotation of inertial disk particles in wall turbulence

Abstract

Abstract The translational and rotational dynamics of oblate spheroidal particles suspended in a directly simulated turbulent channel flow have been examined. Inertial disk-like particles exhibited a significant preferential orientation in the plane of the mean shear. The rotational inertia about the symmetry axis of the disk-like particles hampered the spin-up of the flattest particles to match the mean flow vorticity. The influence of the particle shape on the orientation and rotation diminished as the translational inertia increased from Stokes number 1 to 30. An isotropization of both orientation and rotation could be observed in the core region of the channel. The translational motion of the oblate spheroids had a weak dependence on the aspect ratio. We therefore concluded that inertial particles sample nearly the same flow field irrespective of shape. Nevertheless, the orientation and rotation of disk-like particles turned out to be qualitatively different from the dynamics of fibre-like particles.