Peristaltic flow of a Bingham fluid in a channel

We study the peristaltic transport of a Bingham fluid in a channel with small aspect ratio whose walls behave as a periodic traveling wave. The governing equations in the unyielded phase are obtained writing the integral formulation for the momentum balance. As shown in Fusi et al. (2015), this approach allows to overcome the so-called “lubrication paradox” which may arise in the thin film approximation. We consider the case in which the inlet flux is prescribed and the one in which the flow is driven by a given pressure drop. In both cases the solution of the problem is determined solving a nonlinear integral equation for the yield surface. We perform some numerical simulations to illustrate the behavior of the yield surface, assuming that the traveling wave describing the peristaltic motion has a sinusoidal shape.