Drag and lift forces on a spherical particle moving on a wall in a shear flow at finite Re

Recent research (Zeng, PhD thesis, 2007; Zeng et al ., Phys. Fluids , vol. 21, 2009, art. no. 033302) has shown that both the shear- and wall-induced lift contributions on a particle sharply increase as the gap between the wall and the particle is decreased. Explicit expressions that are valid over a range of finite Re were obtained for the drag and lift forces in the limiting cases of a stationary particle in wall-bounded linear flow and of a particle translating parallel to a wall in a quiescent ambient. Here we consider the more general case of a translating and rotating particle in a wall-bounded linear shear flow where shear, translational and rotational effects superpose. We have considered a modest Reynolds number range of 1–100. Direct numerical simulations using immersed boundary method were performed to systematically figure out the characteristics of hydrodynamic forces on a finite-sized particle moving while almost in contact with a wall. We present composite correlation for the hydrodynamic forces which are in agreement with all the available low-Reynolds-number theories.