The effect of hydrodynamic interactions on the average properties of a bidisperse suspension of high Reynolds number, low Weber number bubbles

Abstract

The hydrodynamic interaction between a pair of nondeformable bubbles (low Weber number limit) in potential flow (high Reynolds number limit) was analyzed. The velocity potential was determined using twin spherical expansions, and the equations of motion were calculated by enforcing the zero net force condition on the surface of the bubbles. The acceleration due to the interaction is expressed in a perturbation series in the parameter (a_i/R), where a_i is the radius of bubble i, R is the distance between the bubbles, and the leading-order acceleration was found to decrease as (a_i/R)⁴. The effect of potential flow interactions on the trajectory of a pair of bubbles of different sizes (size ratio greater than 1.07 at a Reynolds number of 200) rising due to gravity was studied. A salient feature of the trajectories is that the surfaces of the bubble do not come into contact during the interaction, except when the smaller bubble radius is less than 0.233 times the larger bubble radius when the Reynolds number based on the larger bubble is 200. In the latter case, however, the Reynolds number based on the radius of the smaller bubble is not large enough to justify the potential flow approximation. For interactions where collisions do not occur, the mean-square fluctuating velocity in a uniform suspension and the hydrodynamic diffusivities in a nonuniform suspension were calculated by performing an ensemble average over pair interactions. The pair averaging procedure is valid for dilute suspensions (V«18/Re, where V is the volume fraction of the bubbles and Re is the Reynolds number based on the bubble radius and its terminal velocity).