Longitudinal shear-induced diffusion of spheres in a dilute suspension

Abstract

We present a calculation of the hydrodynamic self-diffusion coefficient of a tagged particle in a dilute mono-dispersed suspension of small neutrally buoyant spheres undergoing a steady simple shearing motion. The displacement of the tagged particle parallel to the longitudinal or streamwise direction resulting from a ‘collision’ with one other particle is calculated on the assumption that inertia and Brownian motion effects are negligible. Summing over different pairs leads to a logarithmically divergent integral for the diffusivity which is rendered finite by allowing for the cutoff due to the occasional presence of another pair of particles. The longitudinal shearinduced self-diffusion coefficient is thus found to be 0.267a2γ{cln c−1 + O(c)], where γ denotes the applied shear rate, a is the radius of the spheres and c their volume concentration.