Viscosity of the liquid phase in a dispersion

Abstract

The motion of a dispersion (continuous medium and particles) may be described [1] via the equations ot conservation of matter and momentum for the two phases separately. Here it is necessary to know how the viscosity, pressure in the solid, and other quantities vary with the parameters of the motion. This difficulty occurs even for the very simple model where the internal stresses in the dispersed phase are taken as zero, as there is then an uncertainty as to the viscosity of the medium, which is not a material constant and is dependent on the concentration. There is also uncertainty as to the forces of interaction between the phases. There are numerous empirical relationships for these forces, and also a theoretical one [2]. Here an analogous method is applied to derive an expression for the viscosity of the liquid. This viscosity applies to a liquid filtering through a porous medium in the particular case where the concentration is such as to produce close packing of the solid particles. The result corresponds to standard formulas in the case of low concentrations.