The elasto-inertial effects on particle focusing in a square-tube flow were investigated experimentally and numerically. Microscale experiments using spherical particles in dilute polymer solutions demonstrated that the particles are focused on the midline and/or the diagonal in a downstream cross-section, depending on the polymer concentration. Numerical computations based on the FENE-P model for the viscoelastic flow reproduced these focusing patterns. It was revealed that the transitions among the patterns are accounted for by the elastic forces due to the first normal stress difference and the polymer elongation, which are the essentials of the viscoelastic fluid.
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