Towards an improved understanding of inviscid fluid-mediated particle-particle interaction in compressible flows

The inviscid unsteady force on a sphere in an accelerating flow is a compressible generalization of the well-known added mass force derived in standard incompressible potential flow theory. This force is often important in driving the evolution of particle positions in compressible dispersed multiphase flows when gradients are sufficiently large, such as in shock-particle interactions. Such flows are important in a variety of industrial and engineering applications. Presently we provide a better understanding of the modification of these forces due to fluid-mediated particle-particle interactions by studying the problem in the acoustic limit. We evaluate the acoustic scattering solution for multiple spheres analytically using a method that rigorously satisfies the no-penetration boundary condition on the surface of each sphere. Finally, we present results that quantitatively characterize the neighbor influence.