Applied Mathematics and Mechanics (English Edition) ›› 2002, Vol. 23 ›› Issue (5): 514-534.

• Articles • Previous Articles     Next Articles

THE THREE-DIMENSIONAL FUNDAMENTAL SOLUTION TO STOKES FLOW IN THE OBLATE SPHEROIDAL COORDINATES WITH APPLICATIONS TO MULTIPLES SPHEROID PROBLEMS

ZHUANG Hong1,2, YAN Zong-yi1, WU Wang-yi1   

  1. 1. Department of Mechanics and Engineering Science, Peking University, Beijing 100871, P. R. China;
    2. 4837-267-605, Pharmaceutical Sciences, Pharmacia Corporation, 301 Henrietta Street, Kalamazoo, Michigan, U. S. A
  • Received:2001-05-18 Revised:2001-10-15 Online:2002-05-18 Published:2002-05-18
  • Supported by:
    the National Natural Science Foundation of China(86030028,38970244)

Abstract: A new three-dimensional fundamental solution to the Stokes flow was proposed by transforming the solid harmonic functions in Lamb’s solution into expressions in terms of the oblate spheroidal coordinates. These fundamental solutions are advantageous in treating flows past an arbitrary number of arbitrarily positioned and oriented oblate spheroids. The least squares technique was adopted herein so that the convergence difficulties often encountered in solving three-dimensional problems were completely avoided. The examples demonstrate that present approach is highly accurate, consistently stable and computationally efficient. The oblate spheroid may be used to model a variety of particle shapes between a circular disk and a sphere. For the first time, the effect of various geometric factors on the forces and torques exerted on two oblate spheroids were systematically studied by using the proposed fundamental solutions. The generality of this approach was illustrated by two problems of three spheroids.

2010 MSC Number: 

APS Journals | CSTAM Journals | AMS Journals | EMS Journals | ASME Journals