In homogeneous isotropic turbulence, slender rods are known to align with the Lagrangian stretching direction. However, how the degree of alignment depends on the aspect ratio of the rod is not understood. Moreover, many flows of practical interest are anisotropic and inhomogeneous. Here we study the alignment of rods with the Lagrangian stretching direction in a channel flow, which is approximately homogeneous and isotropic near the center but inhomogeneous and anisotropic near the walls. Our main question is how the distribution of relative angles between a rod and the Lagrangian stretching direction depends on the aspect ratio of the rod and upon the distance of the rod from the channel wall. We find that the distribution exhibits two regimes: a plateau at small angles that corresponds to random uncorrelated motion, and power-law tails that describe large excursions. The variance of the relative angle is described by the width of the plateau. We find that slender rods near the channel center align better with the Lagrangian stretching direction, compared to those near the channel wall. These observations are explained in terms of simple statistical models based on Jefferys equation, qualitatively near the channel center and quantitatively near the channel wall. Lastly we discuss the consequences of our results for the distribution of relative angles between the orientations of nearby rods (Zhao et al., Phys. Rev. Fluids, vol. 4, 2019, 054602).
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