A problem of steady micropolar flow in a sinusodal channel
by
Dalia Sabina Cimpean
Department of Mathematics, Technical University of Cluj-Napoca, Romania
Coauthors: Ioan Pop, Derek B. Ingham

The problem of micropolar flows, in wavy channels, has a wide range of applicability in practical problems, such as to observe the characteristics of animal blood, polymeric fluids, liquid crystals, or in many other processes which imply this kind of flow in industry.

In this study, a mathematical model of a steady micropolar flow, in a sinusoidal channel, is presented. In order to simplify the boundary conditions of the problem on the wall, the walls of the channel are transformed into parallel straight lines. The stream function of the flow and the gyration vector are expanded in a series thereby the wall amplitude being the perturbation parameter.

For the case considered, the problem reduces to a system of ordinary differential equations which is solved numerically using the NAG Fortran Routine D02HBF. Representative results for the velocity and microrotation profiles are presented for different Reynolds numbers in the case of weak concentration of particles.

Date received: July 5, 2006