Jeffery's Orbits

Jeffery's orbits describe the irregular rotation of an ellipsoid suspended in a sheared fluid. In general, there is a continuum of possible orbits. This Demonstration depicts one particular solution at varying values of orbital constants.

Details

The motion of an isolated ellipsoid in a viscous fluid was first described by Jeffery in 1922. Later, it was shown that the Jeffery's orbit is also valid for a cylinder, using an effective aspect ratio. In this Demonstration we have fixed the aspect ratio of the ellipsoid to be 3 and used Jeffery's solutions to visualize its motion.

References

[1] G. B. Jeffery, "The Motion of Ellipsoidal Particles Immersed in a Viscous Fluid," Proceedings of the Royal Society Series A, 102(715), 1922 pp. 161–179.

Permanent Citation

Pramukta Kumar, G. B. Jeffery

"Jeffery's Orbits"
http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/JefferysOrbits/
Wolfram Demonstrations Project
Published: October 19, 2011