In this study, the aggregation of particles settling in a shear-thinning fluid is numerically
investigated with the distributed-Lagrange-multiplier based fictitious domain (DLM/FD)
method. The collocation-element method and a fractional-step scheme based on keeping
the Lagrange multiplier at the previous time level in the momentum equations are adopted to
discretize the Lagrange multiplier. The lubrication force correction is implemented in the
code as a collision strategy. We employ a thixotropic model to account for the time effect of …