Force Decomposition of Medium Reynolds Number Oscillating Flow Over a Submerged Sphere

A variety of engineering applications involve medium Reynolds number (Re) oscillating flow around spherical objects (e.g. aerosol dispersion, microorganism motion, sedimentation of small particles, etc.), and they usually require accurate prediction of the movement of particles and the forces. Currently, the popular model of predicting forces acting on an accelerated submerged sphere was developed more than 100 years ago, but only limited to Stokes flow (Re << 1). In the 1960s, Odar and Hamilton conducted experiments and extended the model for Re number up to 64 (OH-64 law). The aim of this study is to further extend the Re number to 300 via numerical simulations using ANSYS Fluent, so that the model is more capable for more varieties of engineering applications. It is expected that the results of this study will be beneficial to advance the fundamental understanding of oscillating flow over spheres and the potential applications.