A NEW METHOD TO SIMULATE THE DYNAMICS OF SINGLE FIBER IN COMPLEX FLOW FIELDS

The translational and rotational dynamics of fiberssuspended in a fluid medium are important in many different fields of modemtechnology. Jeffery derived an equation of motion for a single rigidellipsoidal particle suspended in Newtonian fluids. Unfortunately, theanalytical solutions of Jeffery equation could only be obtained in a simpleplanar shear flow and a planar elongational flow. The main difficulty in the numerical treatment of Jeffery equation is the singularity dueto the term \cot \theta . In this paper, a co-rotational coordinate systemis proposed, which can completely eliminates this singularity. The validityof the proposed scheme is shown by a comparison between numericalresults and the analytical solution. New algorithm can easily beextended to simulatethe dynamics of single fiber in complex flow fields.