Lubrication solution of the flow of a Herschel-Bulkley fluid with pressure-dependent rheological parameters in an asymmetric channel
Date
2019ISSN
1070-6631Source
Physics of FluidsVolume
31Issue
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The lubrication flow of a Herschel-Bulkley fluid in a long asymmetric channel, the walls of which are described by two arbitrary functions h1(x) and h2(x) such that h1(x) < h2(x) and h1(x) + h2(x) are linear, is solved extending a recently proposed method, which avoids the lubrication paradox approximating satisfactorily the correct shape of the yield surface at zero order [P. Panaseti et al., “Pressure-driven flow of a Herschel-Bulkley fluid with pressure-dependent rheological parameters,” Phys. Fluids 30, 030701 (2018)]. Both the consistency index and the yield stress are assumed to be pressure-dependent. Under the lubrication approximation, the pressure at zero order is a function of x only, is decoupled from the velocity components, and obeys a first-order integro-differential equation. An interesting feature of the asymmetric flow is that the unyielded core moves not only in the main flow direction but also in the transverse direction. Explicit expressions for the two yield surfaces defining the asymmetric unyielded core are obtained, and the two velocity components in both the yielded and unyielded regions are calculated by means of closed-form expressions in terms of the calculated pressure and the two yield surfaces. The method is applicable in a range of Bingham numbers where the unyielded core extends from the inlet to the outlet plane of the channel. Semi-analytical solutions are derived in the case of an asymmetric channel with h1 = 0 and linearly varying h2. Representative results demonstrating the effects of the Bingham number and the consistency-index and yield-stress growth numbers are discussed.