Stokesian Dynamic Simulation of Sedimenting Spheres in a Newtonian Fluid

Computes 3D trajectories of sedimenting spheres at low Re numbers.

Stokesian Dynamics, a method developed by Brady and Bossis in the 80s, simulates the 3D motion of hydrodynamically interacting spheres at low Reynolds numbers. This program was originally written by Professor Ron Phillips during his PhD thesis at MIT in 1989. The code was adapted from Fortran 77 to a MATLAB program by Housam Binous. Permission was obtained from Professor Phillips to post this work. Using Euler's integration scheme was one simplification of the original code that was performed by Housam Binous. The code call a .m file called NEWTON2.m, which needs three files TEMPM.m, FTMOB.m and SSI.m as well as a data file called data.m. Several simulations are presented in the programs called StokesianDynamics. Two sphere's falling at low Reynolds number can have lateral motion during their fall. Two spheres can also rotate, as they sediment, for certain initial configurations. Four vertically aligned spheres, initially at equal distance from each others, will tend to drift apart. Four and six spheres sedimenting will show periodic arrangements that are very peculiar. This Stokesian Dynamics method was extended to non-Newtonian fluids by Binous and Phillips in 1999 who used FENE dumbbell suspensions.