Influence of Wall Proximity on the Lift and Drag of a Particle in an Oscillatory Flow

We report on the lift and drag forces on a stationary sphere subjected to a wall-bounded oscillatory flow. We show how these forces depend on two parameters, namely, the distance between the particle and the bounding wall, and on the frequency of the oscillatory flow. The forces were obtained from numerical solutions of the unsteady incompressible Navier–Stokes equations. For the range of parameters considered, a spectral analysis found that the forces depended on a small number of degrees of freedom. The drag force manifested little change in character as the parameters varied. On the other hand, the lift force varied significantly: We found that the lift force can have a positive as well as a negative time-averaged value, with an intermediate range of external forcing periods in which enhanced positive lift is possible. Furthermore, we determined that this force exhibits a viscous-dominated and a pressure-dominated range of parameters.