On the effective viscosity of suspensions

This work discusses the classical problem of effective viscosity of a Newtonian fluid with rigid spherical particles. It argues that the simple non-interaction approximation when formulated correctly yields an effective viscosity ratio for the suspension in the form mu/mu(0) = (1 - 2.5 phi)(-1) that remains accurate at much higher volume fractions of particles than the usual first-order approximation mu/mu(0) = 1 + 2.5 phi. (C) 2010 Elsevier Ltd. All rights reserved.