Veering of Saffman lift forсe at flow past sphere without separation

The article shows the characteristics of a sphere placed in a linear shear flow. The Reynolds number ranges from 0.1 to 10, and the dimensionless velocity gradient is 0.1. The coefficients of drag and lift forces do not depend on the change in the distance to the boundaries of the computational domain and the reduction of cell sizes. The results are obtained in the Ansys Fluent package. For small values of the problem parameters, the solution results have a good agreement with the known results. The results confirm the classical view of the Saffman lift force: if the relative velocity is positive, there is a lift force toward the higher velocity of the continuous phase. On the other hand, if the relative velocity is negative the lift force is toward the lower velocity of the continuous phase. Between Reynolds numbers from 4 to 5, the Saffman lift force reverses direction. This results for the first time confirms McLaughlin assumption about negative Saffman lift force.