Critical Yield Numbers of Rigid Particles Settling in Bingham Fluids and Cheeger Sets

We consider the fluid mechanical problem of identifying the critical yield number Yc of a dense solid inclusion (particle) settling under gravity within a bounded domain of Bingham fluid, i.e., the critical ratio of yield stress to buoyancy stress that is sufficient to prevent motion. We restrict ourselves to a two-dimensional planar configuration with a single antiplane component of velocity. Thus, both particle and fluid domains are infinite cylinders of fixed cross-section. We then show that such yield numbers arise from an eigenvalue problem for a constrained total variation. We construct particular solutions to this problem by consecutively solving two Cheeger-type set optimization problems. Finally, we present a number of example geometries in which these geometric solutions can be found explicitly and discuss general features of the solutions.