Investigation of shear-thinning fluid flow undergoing cross-buoyancy in a confined domain

What is it about?

The flow intricacies in the gap-flow region of side-by-side bluff body arrangement are primarily responsible for the vortex shedding and near-wake interaction phenomena in the downstream. Often, counter-intuitive results have evolved when stratified shear-thinning flow is considered instead of a generalized Newtonian fluid. The present study is motivated to decipher the underlying flow physics associated with such aberrations. We studied streamlines, isotherms, variations in surface-viscosity and developed important classifications for flow patterns based on side-by-side spacings to understand and correlate with the previous findings for a Newtonian flow.

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Why is it important?

We have successfully been able to showcase that Newtonian and mild shear-thinning flow follows a classification based on maximum velocity in the gap-flow region. We term them as "pressure-driven" and "momentum-driven" flow regimes. However, at high shear-thinning effects, such classification fails to exist. In addition, the shear-thinning flow undergoes primarily single-body deflected-type flow patterns compared to other non-linear dynamics like a chaotic or quasi-periodic flow which starts evolving with mild shear-thinning to a purely Newtonian flow. These classifications will pave the way for an understanding of more complicated and exhaustive multiple bluff-body arrangements like the ones encountered in compact heat exchangers, reboilers, condensers, etc.

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