Migration of a neutrally buoyant particle suspended in a general bounded creeping flow

The migration phenomenon of a neutrally buoyant solid particle suspended in an arbitrary flowing fluid of zero Reynolds number bounded by a plane solid wall has been analytically studied for the situation where the influence of boundary conditions is important. In particular, it is shown that for flows near a solid wall, particles can move in such a manner so as to cause large spatial variations of particle concentration in the suspension.Similar techniques are used to obtain a theoretical formulation for the non-deformable spherical droplet suspended in the prescribed flowing fluid bounded by the solid plane boundary. Special cases such as flows containing a vortex near the solid boundary or flows which are periodic along the wall are particularly examined.Experiments have been performed to verify the validity of the theory for the solid particles and non-deformable fluid drops. Experimental results are also compared to theoretical conclusions