Numerical and experimental investigations of an air bubble rising in a Carreau-Yasuda shear-thinning liquid

Premlata, A R and Tripathi, M K and Karri, Badarinath and Sahu, Kirti Chandra (2017) Numerical and experimental investigations of an air bubble rising in a Carreau-Yasuda shear-thinning liquid. Physics of Fluids, 29 (3). ISSN 1070-6631

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Abstract

The dynamics of an air bubble rising in a quiescent shear-thinning fluid modelled using a simplified Carreau-Yasuda rheological model is investigated numerically and experimentally. For the parameter values considered in the present study, a rising bubble in a shear-thinning fluid exhibits a three-dimensional behaviour. Both path instabilities (zigzagging/spiralling motion) and topological changes are observed for an air bubble rising in a shear-thinning fluid. However, for a Newtonian surrounding fluid, a bubble maintains azimuthal symmetry and rises in a straight path for the same set of parameters. The mechanism of this three-dimensional behaviour is investigated by inspecting the variation of the vertical vorticity component and viscosity. Experiments have also been conducted using a high speed camera to visualise the bubble rise behaviour in both Newtonian and shear-thinning fluids as surrounding media. The shapes and trajectories of the bubble obtained from experiments show a qualitative agreement with those obtained from numerical simulations.

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