Grant: Discovery Grants Program - Individual

The research program focuses on furthering our understanding of the underlying mechanisms responsible for complex fluid flow. A major goal of the research is to develop theoretical and numerical tools capable of incorporating a broad range of fluid particle interactions, that can also be used to estimate transport coefficients in continuum flow models, as well as to detect the breakdown of the continuum assumption. To achieve this goal, a stochastic phase-space description and a corresponding particle-based numerical model will be developed. This work is motivated in part by the controversy concerning the existence of a yield stress transport coefficient for blood, that is generally believed to exist due to red blood cell interaction (aggregation) at low shear rates. An experimentally obtained value for the yield stress depends on the extrapolation procedure used and on the experimental geometry, leading to a wide range of reported values that is too large to be meaningful. The research program allows for the incorporation of more complicated particle interactions, whose effects on the flow properties in various flow geometries will be explored. Having a broad range of applications, the methods will be used to: 1) assess the effect of geometry on the flow properties of fluids, 2) to assess and appropriately quantify the reactive mechanism for aggregating systems with realistic reaction rates (eg. constant versus velocity- or shear-rate dependent reaction rates), and 3) to explore the breakdown of the continuum assumption as a result of particle interaction or flow geometry. The novel methods in this research program will lead to significant contributions that will benefit various industries across Canada.