Measurements of lift and torque on a rotating sphere at intermediate reynolds numbers

The study of suspension mechanics, which finds applications in many fields such as pneumatic transport, chemical engineering or environmental mechanics, includes often the need to compute particle trajectories. It is necessary to have a good knowledge of the force and the torque T exerted by the fluid on the particle, which is generally rotating. The hydrodynamic force on a moving body is the resultant of the drag force D and the lift force L, which are usually characterized by the dimensionless coefficients C sub(D) = 2D/ rho V super(2)A and C sub(L) = 2L/ rho V super(2)A, where rho is the fluid density, V the magnitude of the relative velocity, and A the frontal area of the body.