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An analysis of advective diffusion in branching channels

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  19 April 2006

P. F. Hamblin
Affiliation:
National Water Research Institute, Burlington, Canada L7R 4A6
Present address: Department of Civil Engineering, University of Western Australia, Nedlands 6009, Western Australia.

Abstract

Solutions to the steady advection–diffusion equation in a branching channel are obtained for both uniform and spatially varying flow fields and for two channel geometries. An interesting feature of the solutions is that anisotropy of the dispersion coefficients in the direction of the streamlines may be accounted for. The analysis reveals that mixing is confined to a distance, b2U2KN, downstream of the junction in the advection-dominated case and a distance, KS/U, upstream in the diffusion-dominated situation, KS and KN being the diffusivities along and across the flow respectively, U the characteristic velocity of the flow, and b the breadth of channel downstream of the junction.

Type
Research Article
Copyright
© 1980 Cambridge University Press

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