ISSN 1064-2277 PUBLISHED BIMONTHLY BY BEGELL HOUSE, INC. INTERNATIONAL JOURNAL OF FLUID MECHANICS RESEARCH VOLUME 35 NUMBER 5 2008Dispersion in Oscillatory Couette Flow with Absorbing Boundaries! B.S. Mazumder and Suvadip Paul Physics & Applied Mathematics Unit, Indian Statistical Institute Calcutta, India This paper presents the longitudinal dispersion of passive contaminant re- leased in an incompressible viscous fluid flowing between two infinite parallel plates, where the contaminant undergoes irreversible heterogeneous reaction with the boundary walls. The flow is driven by the oscillation of the upper plate in its own plane with a constant velocity as well as by an imposed constant pres- sure gradient. This type of flow may be termed unsteady generalized Couette flow. A finite difference implicit scheme has been adopted to solve the unsteady convection-diffusion equation for all time periods based on the Aris method of moments. The influence of applied constant pressure gradient, oscillation of the upper plate, and the absorption parameter at both walls on dispersion is discussed. The dispersion coefficients are obtained for three different flow situations: plane and generalized Couette flow, unsteady generalized Couette flow, and for com- parison, the combined effect of steady and unsteady Couette flows, separately. The most striking result is that unlike the case of parallel flow under periodic pressure gradient, the double-frequency period in the dispersion phenomena does not vanish, even for the high frequency of upper-plate oscillation for the case of unsteady generalized Couette flow. The axial distributions of mean concentration are determined from the first four central moments using Hermite polynomial rep- resentation for the periodic flow with or without nonzero mean flow. Introduction Taylor [1] studied the dispersion of a diffusing solute in a fluid flowing through a circular impermeable tube, relative to a plane moving with the mean speed of the flow. Aris [2] extended Taylor's theory for pipe Poiscuille flow using the method of moments. They concluded that after a sufficiently large time, when the tracer is mixed completely across the tube, the shape of the distribution of the tracer material tends to a normal distribution, Barton [3] resolved certain technical *Received 16.12.2007 415 ISSN 1064-2277 ‘© 2008 Begell House, Inc.difficulties that occurred in the Aris method of solution and presented a complete moment solution valid for all time. Mukherjee and Mazumder [4] extended the Aris~Barton method of moments to study the all-time evolution of the second central moment equation for dispersion in an oscillatory flow through a conduit. Later this theory was extended by Bandyopadhyay and Mazumder [5] to study the mean, variance, and longitudinal dispersion coefficient of initial tracer material released in an incompressible viscous fluid flowing through a channel. Important contributions to dispersion phenomena in the presence of boundary reaction are found in Gill and Sankarasubramanian [6], Gupta and Gupta (7], Barton [8], Purnama {9], and others. Jayaraman et al. (10] made an attempt to study the dispersion of a solute in a fluid flowing through a curved tube with absorbing walls. Mazumder and Das [11] examined the effect of wall conductance on the axial dispersion in the pulsatile tube flow, and it was extended by Mondal and Mazumder [12] in the case of a channel. On the basis of the generalized dispersion model proposed by Gill and Sankarasubramanian, Jiang and Grotberg [13] studied the bolus contaminant dispersion in oscillatory tube flow with conductive walls. Sarkar and Jayaraman (14] studied the effect of wall absorption in annular pipe flows. Mondal and Mazumder [15] analyzed the dispersion phenomena jn an oscillatory flow through annular pipe in presence of reactive wall and showed the application of the results to a catheterized artery. Erdogan [17] investigated the effect of gravity and the applied pressure gradient on the longi- tudinal dispersion in generalized Couette flow and found that both the gravity and dimensionless pressure gradient produce more dispersion. Dispersion in unsteady generalized Couette flow with- out any reaction at the wall has been discussed by Bandyopadhyay and Mazumder {17}. They confined their analysis only to the case of the combined effect of steady and periodic flow within ‘a channel, The dispersion coefficient due to periodic current generated by plate pulsation was not studied separately. Recently, Ng and Bai [18] analyzed the dispersion in oscillatory Couette flow considering reversible sorptive phase exchange between the solute and the boundary walls. ‘The purpose of the present paper is to numerically study the dispersion phenomena in an un- steady generalized Couette flow in the presence of a first-order heterogeneous irreversible boundary reaction, The main objective is to emphasize the effect of boundary absorption 1o the first four central moments of tracer dispersion in three different flow conditions: steady, unsteady, and the combined effect of steady and unsteady flows separately for all time periods. Results are obtained to explain the influence of applied constant pressure gradient, reaction parameter, and frequency of the upper plate oscillation on the spreading of tracers. The movement of the center of mass and the patterns of the mean concentration distributions in three different flow velocities in the presence of boundary absorption are also discussed. The study of dispersion in Couette flow with boundary absorption has invited much attention due to its environmental application-simulation of a release of dispersing substances in oscillatory current, which generally occurs in tidal basins. Nowadays, Cou- cette flow is considered as a prototype flow commonly used to model shear-driven flows encountered in micromotors, microchannels, and other microfluidic systems. Couette flow has importance in the hydrodynamic theory of lubrication. In recent years, owing to an increasing interest in industrial problems, considerable attention has been focused on dispersion in Couette flow in the presence of boundary absorption. 1. Mathematical Formulations Consider an unsteady, fully developed, two-dimensional laminar flow of a homogeneous, in- compressible viscous fluid between two infinite parallel plates separated by a distance 2L apart, where the upper plate oscillates in its own plane with a constant velocity U and the lower plate is. 476