The bulk stress in a suspension of spheres to order c ²

Abstract

An exact formula is obtained for the term of order c ² in the expression for the bulk stress in a suspension of force-free spherical particles in Newtonian ambient fluid, where c is the volume fraction of the spheres and c ≪ 1. The particles may be of different sizes, and composed of either solid or fluid of arbitrary viscosity. The method of derivation circumvents the familiar obstacle, of non-absolutely convergent integrals representing the effect of all pair interactions in which one specified particle takes part, by the judicious use of a certain quantity which is affected by the presence of distant particles in a similar way and whose mean value in known exactly. The bulk stress is in general of non-Newtonian form and depends on the statistical properties of the suspension which in turn are dependent on the type of bulk flow.