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| MS5-I2 | Microgravity flow phenomena |
Chair:
J.C. Legros (Belgium),
Co-Chairs:
P. Neitzel (USA), J.I.D. Alexander (USA) |
Collisional Granular Flows with and without Gas Interactions in Microgravity
Haitao Xu, Michel Y. Louge
Mechanical & Aerospace Engineering, Cornell University
ABSTRACT
We illustrate the convenience of a long-lasting microgravity environment for
studying flows of granular materials with and without gas interaction. We
consider collisional granular flows of nearly elastic spheres featuring a
single constituent or binary mixtures in various bounded geometries. We
review the equations of the kinetic theory for the conservation of mass,
momentum, fluctuation energy and species concentration. We illustrate their
solutions for shear flows in rectilinear or axisymmetric rectangular
channels with or without a body force. We show that proper boundary
conditions yield numerical solutions in good agreement with molecular
dynamical simulations and with data from physical experiments carried out in
microgravity.