Squeeze flow of a second-order fluid between two parallel disks or two spheres

The normal viscous force of squeeze flow between two arbitrary rigid spheres with an interstitial second-order fluid was studied for modeling wet granular materials using the discrete element method. Based on the Reynolds' lubrication theory, the small parameter method was introduced to approximately analyze velocity field and stress distribution between the two disks. Then a similar procedure was carried out for analyzing the normal interaction between two nearly touching, arbitrary rigid spheres to obtain the pressure distribution and the resulting squeeze force. It has been proved that the solutions can be reduced to the case of a Newtonian fluid when the non-Newtonian terms are neglected.