Thermophoresis of touching solid spheres in the direction along the line joining their centers

A theory of the steady motion of an aggregate of two touching solid, nonvolatile, low-thermalconductivity, spherical particles in the direction along the line joining their centers in a nonuniformly heated viscous gas is constructed in a hydrodynamic regime with slipping at low Reynolds and Peclet numbers. The thermophoretic transport velocity of an aggregate is determined in an approximation linear in the small parameters. The small parameters are the relative deviations of the thermal conductivity of the constituent particles of an aggregate from the thermal conductivity of the external medium. Zh. Tekh. Fiz. 68, 25–31 (June 1998)