Inertial settling of flexible fiber suspensions

We study the inertial settling of suspensions of flexible and rigid fibers using an immersed boundary method. The fibers considered are inextensible and slender, with an aspect ratio of 20. For a single Galileo number of Ga = 160, we examine a range of dimensionless bending rigidities 0.1 < gamma < 20 and fiber concentrations 0.5 < nL(3) < 25, with n being the fiber number density and L the fiber length, that spans dilute and semidilute regimes. The settling fibers form streamers, regions where the fibers are packed and settle faster than the average settling velocity of the suspension, for nL(3) > 10. In the low-concentration regions outside the streamers, the fibers either go upward or have low settling velocities. Flexible fibers exhibit higher packing inside the streamers and smaller streamers compared to the streamers formed by the rigid fibers. Due to this higher packing, the flexible fibers settle faster compared to the rigid fibers. The formation of the streamers counterbalances the hindering of the settling velocity at higher concentrations. At higher nL(3), however, the maximum local concentration of fibers relative to a uniform distribution diminishes for both flexible and rigid fibers as the mobility of the fibers becomes limited due to the presence of other fibers in their vicinity. Due to this limited mobility, the deformation of the fibers and their settling orientation become insensitive to nL(3) for nL(3) > 7. In both the dilute and semidilute regimes, flexible fibers are more aligned with the direction perpendicular to gravity compared to rigid fibers.