Slow Motion of an Assemblage of Porous Spherical Shells Relative to a Fluid

The body-force-driven motion of a homogeneous distribution of spherically symmetric porous shells in an incompressible Newtonian fluid and the fluid flow through a bed of these shell particles are investigated analytically. The effect of the hydrodynamic interaction among the porous shell particles is taken into account by employing a cell-model representation. In the limit of small Reynolds number, the Stokes and Brinkman equations are solved for the flow field around a single particle in a unit cell, and the drag force acting on the particle by the fluid is obtained in closed forms. For a suspension of porous spherical shells, the mobility of the particles decreases or the hydrodynamic interaction among the particles increases monotonically with a decrease in the permeability of the porous shells. The effect of particle interactions on the creeping motion of porous spherical shells relative to a fluid can be quite significant in some situations. In the limiting cases, the analytical solution describing the drag force or mobility for a suspension of porous spherical shells reduces to those for suspensions of impermeable solid spheres and of porous spheres. The particle-interaction behavior for a suspension of porous spherical shells with a relatively low permeability may be approximated by that of permeable spheres when the porous shells are sufficiently thick.