Motion of a doublet of two cylinders in contact in a narrow channel flow.

The motion of two rigid circular cylinders in contact immersed in an incompressible Newtonian fluid in a channel is examined numerically in the zero Reynolds number limit, for various values of the cylinder radius/channel width ratio. Analyses of the time courses of the lateral position and the orientation of the doublet showed that, depending on the initial condition and the doublet/channel size ratio, the doublet exhibit one of the three types of motion: a continuous rotation in the same direction during a period, and a rotation changing its direction at every half period with a large or a small variation of the orientation.