Structure evolution in Poiseuille flow of electrorheological fluids

The equivalent plate conduction model is employed to simulate the structure evolution in Poiseuille flow of electrorheological (ER) fluids subjected to the short-range interaction of multi-particles. It is found that the time taken to form the plug zone is greatly shortened from 18.5 for a dipole model to 7.8 for a conduction model. The velocity peak value of the breathing transition zone increases markedly compared with the simulation results using the dipole model, which is attributed to (1) the strong interaction between contact zone particles and adjacent particles and (2) there is no slip between particles of the contact zone and the electrodes. Moreover, we obtain the three-dimensional evolving graphs of the velocity profile of particles in the ER fluid, and the structure of the particles evolves from a plug zone to a transition zone, finally becoming a wider plug zone.