Handout discussing non-dimensionalization

1 Non-dimensionalization of the Equations of Motion:

Most all of you have now used the Buckingham Pi Theorem as described by Sections 7.1 7.6 to systematically
determine Pi terms for your project, and are currently working on using the ideas of 7.8 to determine the model
scaling. While the Buckingham Pi Theorem is a good method to help you construct a systematically complete set of Pi
terms, it unfortunately does not always give you the most useful terms directly for your problem, since there are many
sets of Pi terms that can legitimately be constructed depending on your choice of repeating variables. How to get past
this problem? This is where research into the literature on similar problems can provide useful guidance (what did
others find useful?) or prior experience from modeling or experiments can provide insight. If simple analytical model
can be constructed, non-dimensionalization of this equation can be a useful means of determining what form of the Pi
terms will be important, as described by section 7.10 of your book.
Non-dimensionalizing the equations that describe your system is one useful means to obtain insight into what
grouping of dimensional parameters form useful Pi terms for scaling your system. For the current project, the equation
of motion for an isolated particle (i.e. mp dVp /dt = F ) is an important component of the model, as this will
determine the trajectory of a particle within the flow. Integrating this equation for a particle released from a specified
location will determine whether or not it will impact a wall, and hence (if the model is reasonably accurate) would
allow you to determine the collection efficiency, provided a sufficient number of particle paths were determined across
the inlet to the device.
Write your equation of motion in a complete as
2
form as possible (keeping all relevant external force
A = 5, B = 5
terms), and non-dimensionalize the equation using ap1.5
propriate length, time and/or velocity reference values
A = 1, B = 5
1
for your independent variables (x, y, and t). Note that
you will need to express your force expression on the
y 0.5
right hand side in terms of the dimensional constants
(such as the density or the size of the particle) and the
0
independent variables (i.e. the position and time) or
-0.5
their derivatives (velocity). Regroup the coefficients
of this ODE on the right-hand side of the equation
-1
and examine to see if you can recognize groupings of
0
1
2
3
4
5
your original Pi terms. These groupings collectively
t 00
dictate the behavior of the particle motion. This is Figure 1: Solution to the equation y + Ay 0 + By = 0 for
why if the Pi term coefficients for the model and pro- (A,B)=(5,5) and (1,5).
totype are the same, the behavior will be the same in
both systems. The sensitivity of your model to these coefficients will also dictate how important they are in terms of
maintaining similarity for that term between the model and the prototype.
A generic example of this is shown in Figure 1, which gives the response to the equation y 00 + Ay 0 + By = 0
with the initial conditions y(0) = 2 and y 0 (0) = 0 for two different values of the parameter A. If this were to be your
non-dimensionalized system, A and B would be the Pi terms of the problem, which shows that changing this Pi term
will give a drastically different result, each of which bears little resemblance to the other case.
In terms of completing the dimensional analysis, a very simple but familiar example can be seen by considering the
ballistic motion of a projectile in a vacuum, specifically desiring to know how far it travels horizontally before landing,
L, (which is our dependent unknown parameter) while requiring the projectile to attain a given height h (being a given,
this is an independent parameter). For this case, the equation of motion and initial conditions are expressed as:

d2 ~x
d~x 
mp 2 = mp~g
with ~x|t=0 = (0, 0) and
= (V0 cos , V0 sin )
dt
dt t=0
L, h, V0 , , g and mp are the natural dimensional parameters for the problem. It turns out, however, that mp completely
cancels out of the problem, making it not relevant to the analysis. Taking, h as our reference value for a length, and V0
as a reference velocity, we can non-dimensionalize our independent variables ~x and t by:
x? =

x
h

y? =

y
h

t? =

t
h/V0

noting that h/V0 is a natural time constant when using this choice of variables. Substituting this in our equation and
regrouping on the right-hand side gives the following non-dimensional equations and initial conditions:

d2 x?
dx? 
?
= cos
=0
with x |t? =0 = 0 and
dt?2
dt? t=0

d2 y ?
gh
dy ? 
?
= sin
=

with
y
|
=
0
and
t? =0
dt?2
V02
dt? t=0


Here we see that the group gh/V02 forms a natural Pi group for this problem, and that appears only in the boundary
conditions.

2 Particle response time and drag models for particles

Much of what is discussed below, and more, can be found in the useful book: Aerosol Technology: Properties,
Behavior, and Measuremetn of Airborne Particles by William C. Hinds, John Wiley and Sons, New York, (1999).
For particles particles moving through a fluid, the
viscous forces often dominate the drag force. Physi1.0
cally, this give rise to a strong damping force on the
particle motion that constantly tries to force the par0.8
ticle velocity to be equal to the surrounding fluid veVp=0.63U0
Vp(t) 0.6
locity. The relative strength of this viscous drag force
in comparison to the inertia of the particle will control
U0 0.4
how quickly the particle adapts to changes in the flow.
0.2
If the particle has a very small mass (such as a piece
of dust) the particle will very quickly adapt to changes
0
1
2
3
4
5
in the surrounding velocity. If, on the other hand, it is
t/
p
a very massive particle (like say a golf ball) it would
take much longer to respond, and will basically ignore Figure 2: Particle velocity history when released from rest in a conchanges in the surrounding fluid. As a consequence, stant, uniform fluid velocity U0 .
the idea of a viscous particle response time is often a useful parameter in particle motion.
The above concept can be made more quantitative by considering what happens if we take a small particle at rest,
and suddenly expose it to a constant, uniform fluid velocity U0 . The one-dimensional equation of motion is given by
the first order equation:
dVp
mp
= Fdrag
with Vp |t=0 = 0
dt
For small particles, where the Reynolds number based on particle size is small (i.e. Rep = f |Vf Vp | D/ < 1),
the drag force can be expressed by what is commonly referred to as the Stokes drag force:
Fdrag,Stokes = 3D (Vf Vp ) ,
where Vf is the fluid velocity at the particle position. Noting that for a spherical particle mp = p D3 /6 and using
the Stokes drag law with the fluid velocity given as a constant U0 , one can simplify the above equation to:
dVp
18
=
(U0 Vp ) ,
dt
p D2

with Vp |t=0 = 0

Solving the above equation gives the solution




t
Vp (t) = U0 1 exp
,
p
where p p D2 /18 is defined as the viscous particle response time. This is the classical damped solution to a
first-order system response, as shown in Figure 2. Here one can see that p represents the time it takes for the particle
to adjust to 63% of the fluid velocity (assuming a step change in velocity).
2

In more complicated flows, this is a convenient time scale to categorize a particles behavior. For example, if we
have an unsteady flow (or at least if the particle see a changing fluid velocity as it moves through a steady flow) that
has a characteristic time scale of f , then the ratio of p /f would give an indication of how well the particle can
follow changes in the flow. If p /f << 1, then the particle should follow the flow more or less as a fluid element due
to the fact that it adjusts to the changes in the flow much quicker than they are occurring. If the particle response time
is much larger than the fluid time scale, the opposite it true: the particle can only correct a small faction of its velocity
before the fluid has already made a large change, rendering it unable to respond.
For particle conditions where Rep is not small, the Stokes drag law is often adjusted with an empirical formula developed by comparing across many experimental tests. Although many such corrections can be found in the literature,
one particularly simple and effective one is given by (White, Viscous Fluid Flow, 2nd ed, McGraw-Hill, New York,
1991):
#
"
Rep
Rep

+
p
Fdrag = 3D (Vf Vp ) 1 +
60
4 1 + Rep
The above is accurate to within several percent for Rep < 100 and within 10% over the particle Reynolds number
range 100 < Rep < 2 105 . Other empirical approximations are possible and may be a better choice.