The effective thermal conductivity of sheared suspensions

Abstract

Formal expressions are derived for the effective thermal conductivity K_ij of randomly dispersed suspensions undergoing shear. These are then evaluated for the cases of dilute suspensions of cylinders and of spheres when the bulk motion is a simple shear, the Péclet number Pe is large, and the particle Reynolds number is small enough for inertia effects to be negligible. It is shown that as Pe → ∞ the presence of shear can significantly affect the O(ϕ) contribution to K_ij (ϕ being the volume fraction of the solids), which becomes independent of k, the thermal conductivity of the suspended material. This results from the presence of regions of closed streamlines surrounding each particle which, for sufficiently large Pe, attain an isothermal state and therefore act as regions of infinite conductivity.