Corrector Equations in Fluid Mechanics: Effective Viscosity of Colloidal Suspensions

• DOI: 10.1007/s00205-020-01589-1
• Publication Date: 2020-11-22T14:02:41Z
• Authors: Mitia Duerinckx; Antoine Gloria
• Keywords: Homogenization; Complex fluid

Consider a colloidal suspension of rigid particles in a steady Stokes flow. In a celebrated work, Einstein argued that in the regime of dilute particles the system behaves at leading order like a Stokes fluid with some explicit effective viscosity. In the present contribution, we rigorously define a notion of effective viscosity, regardless of the dilute regime assumption. More precisely, we establish a homogenization result when particles are distributed according to a given stationary and ergodic random point process. The main novelty is the introduction and analysis of suitable corrector equations.<br/>30 pages<br/>