On the coefficients of the interaction forces in a two-phase flow of a fluid infused with particles

•A modified form of the mixture theory is used to study flow of a two-component mixture in a channel.•A numerical solver is developed to study the flow of blood in a micro-channel where experimental data are available.•New coefficients for the drag and lift forces are suggested.

In this short paper we study the flow of a mixture of a fluid infused with particles in a channel. We use the classical mixture theory approach whereby constitutive relations are proposed for the stress tensor of each phase. For the interaction forces, the effect of different hindrance functions for the drag force is studied; moreover a generalized form of the expression for the coefficients of the interactions forces, also known as the hindrance functions, is suggested. For studying this two-component system numerically, a three-dimensional CFD solver based on OpenFOAM® has been developed. Applying this solver, a specific problem (blood flow) has been studied for which our numerical results and experimental data show good agreement.