Tumbling of a Brownian particle in an extensional flow
arXiv:1609.06453 · doi:10.1098/rspa.2016.0226
Abstract
The phenomenon of tumbling of microscopic objects is commonly associated with shear flows. We address the question of whether tumbling can also occur in stretching-dominated flows. To answer this, we study the dynamics of a semi-flexible trumbbell in a planar extensional velocity field. We show that the trumbbell undergoes a random tumbling-through-folding motion. The probability distribution of long tumbling times is exponential with a time scale exponentially increasing with the Weissenberg number.
arXiv comment11 pages, 8 figures, to be published in Proc. R. Soc. A
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