Date of Award

5-2015

Document Type

Thesis

Degree Name

Master of Science (MS)

College/School

College of Science and Mathematics

Department/Program

Mathematical Sciences

Thesis Sponsor/Dissertation Chair/Project Chair

Ashwin Vaidya

Committee Member

Bong Jae Chung

Committee Member

Bogdan Nita

Abstract

We discuss the equilibrium configurations of fibers clamped to an ellipsoidal body and immersed in a flow ranging between 0-50 cm/s. Experimental and numerical results are presented and the effects of flow speed, body shape, and orientation of the fibers upon the equilibrium configuration are investigated. Our investigations reveal that the orientation of the fibers, the length of the length fibers, as well as, the shape of the body has a significant impact upon the bending and drag experienced by the ellipsoid-fiber system. We note that (i) less eccentric bodies experience greater drag forces and increased bending of the attached fibers, (ii) the fibers oriented with the flow experienced less drag and bending than the fibers oriented perpendicular to the flow, (iii) the longer fibers bend significantly more than the shorter ones, and (iv) the longer fibers display oscillatory or flapping motion at much lower flow speeds than their shorter counterparts. The simulations also reveal that the drag on the fiber is noticeably affected by the size of the basal body. Drag exponents (or Vogel exponents) are also computed and seen to deviate slightly from previous results.

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