NUMERICAL RESEARCH ON THE EFFECT OF FIBERS ON THE PROPERTY OF TURBULENT FIBER SUSPENSION IN A CHANNEL

To explore the rheological property in turbulent channel flow of fiber suspensions, the equation of probability distribution function for mean fiber orientation and the Reynolds averaged Navier-Stokes equation with the term of additional stress resulted from fibers were solved with numerical methods to get the distributions of the mean velocity and turbulent kinetic energy. The simulation results show that the effect of fibers on turbulent channel flow is equivalent to an additional viscosity. The turbulent velocity profiles of fiber suspension become gradually sharper by increasing the fiber concentration and/or decreasing the Reynolds number. The turbulent kinetic energy will increase with increasing Reynolds number and fiber concentration.