ABSTRACT
This chapter discusses the effects of particle shape and orientation on the drag of freely settling particles. It presents a general theoretical background on the drag force and applications and utilizations of the drag force in design. The chapter introduces a new model for the estimation of the drag exerted by different geometric objects for flows in the Stokes region, derived using morphological analysis. The shape characteristics of the solid particles can exert a profound influence on the drag. The shape characteristics of a solid particle can exert a profound influence on its ability to absorb momentum from a moving fluid stream and, therefore, can greatly affect the settling velocity. The primary difficulty in obtaining such a correlation and in assessing the effect of shape on the terminal velocity has been the inability to systematically and quantitatively describe shape itself.
