The flow of Newtonian and inelastic non-Newtonian fluids in eccentric annuli with inner-cylinder rotation

This brief note presents a preliminary analysis of the flow of Newtonian and inelastic non-Newtonian fluids in eccentric annuli with inner-cylinder rotation. The study has been motivated by a need to understand the flow of drilling fluids in present-day oil wells, the annuli of which are more accurately represented as eccentric, rather than concentric, annuli. To derive a physical understanding of the results numerically generated for this study, they are also analysed in terms of dimensionless variables. In this way, the underlying phenomena of this complex three-dimensional problem are easily visualized.