Drag coefficient of a rigid spherical particle in a near-critical binary fluid mixture

Abstract

We calculate the drag coefficient of a rigid spherical particle in an incompressible binary fluid mixture. A weak preferential attraction is assumed between the particle surface and one of the fluid components, and the difference in the viscosity between the two components is neglected. Using the Gaussian free-energy functional and solving the hydrodynamic equation explicitly, we can show that the preferential attraction makes the drag coefficient larger as the bulk correlation length becomes longer. The dependence of the deviation from the Stokes law on the correlation length, when it is short, turns out to be much steeper than the previous estimates. © 2013 The Physical Society of Japan.