Monte Carlo Simulation of Fiber Orientation in a Shear Flow with Brownian Rotation

Abstract

The orientation of fibers in a shear flow with Brownian rotation can be described by the Fokker-Planck equation in an Eulerian description. This equation was solved previously by Peterlin (1938) and Krushkal and Gallily (1984) by expansion methods that converged rapidly only for small rotational Péclet numbers Pe_r. We used a Monte Carlo method to determine the orientation of fibers in the Lagrangian frame and calculated the average translational mobility of a fiber system for large Pe_r . The average mobility result matched well with that obtained from Krushkal and Gallily's expansion method at Pe_r = 10.