Sphere Drag and Settling Velocity Revisited
Publication: Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 129, Issue 3
Abstract
Sphere drag data from throughout the twentieth century are available in tabular form. However, much of the data arose from experiments in small diameter cylindrical vessels, where the results might have been influenced by the wall effect. Wall effect corrections developed by others were applied to 178 of the 480 data points collected. This corrected data set is believed to be free of the influence of wall effects. Existing drag and settling velocity correlations were compared to this data set. In addition, new correlations of the same forms were developed using the corrected data. Two new correlations of sphere terminal velocity are proposed, one applicable for all Reynolds numbers less than and the other designed to predict settling velocities with exceptional accuracy for terminal Reynolds numbers less than 4,000, a region that contains almost all applications of interest in environmental engineering. The trial and error solution for settling velocity using the Fair and Geyer equation for drag should be retired in favor of the direct calculation available from these new correlations.
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Information & Authors
Information
Published In
Journal of Environmental Engineering
Volume 129 • Issue 3 • March 2003
Pages: 222 - 231
Copyright
Copyright © 2003 American Society of Civil Engineers.
History
Received: Jul 27, 2001
Accepted: Feb 8, 2002
Published online: Feb 14, 2003
Published in print: Mar 2003
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