Migration of rigid spheres in a two-dimensional unidirectional shear flow of a second-order fluid

The lateral migration of a neutrally buoyant rigid sphere suspended in a second-order fluid is studied theoretically for unidirectional two-dimensional flows. The results demonstrate the existence of migration induced by normal stresses whenever there is a lateral variation of the shear rate in the undisturbed flow. The migration occurs in the direction of decreasing absolute shear rate, which is towards the centre-line for a plane Poiseuille flow and towards the outer cylinder wall for Couette flow. The direction of migration agrees with existing experimental data for a viscoelastic suspending fluid, and qualitative agreement is found between the theoretically predicted and experimentally measured sphere trajectories