Numerical Simulations Reveal Fluid Flows Near Solid Boundaries
DOI: 10.1063/1.2811410
A thin layer of dust is not blown off the blades of a fan when the fan is turned on; only large dust particles are. Nor can one remove the fine layer of dust from a tabletop by blowing parallel to the table’s surface. Richard Feynman, in his famous lectures on physics, used these examples to illustrate that in the relative motion of a viscous fluid past a solid, the component of the fluid velocity along the solid surface vanishes at the solidfluid interface. Recent molecular dynamics simulations by a group at Schlumberger‐Doll Research (Ridgefield, Connecticut) elucidate the nature of fluid flows near a solid boundary, and especially near the line where the meniscus (or interface) between two fluids meets the solid boundary.
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