Mobility matrix of a spherical particle translating and rotating in a viscous fluid confined in a spherical cell, and the rate of escape from the cell

International audienceThe mobility matrix of a spherical particle moving in a spherical cavity, filled with a viscous incompressible fluid, and with no-slip boundary condition at the wall of the cavity, is evaluated from the Oseen tensor for the cavity by the method used by Lorentz for a particle near a planar wall. For the case that the particle is a rigid sphere with no-slip boundary condition the comparison with exact calculations shows that the approximation is quite accurate, provided the radius of the particle is small relative to that of the cavity, and provided the particle is not too close to the wall. The translational mobility is used to derive the diffusion tensor of a Brownian particle via an Einstein relation. The approximate result for the diffusion tensor is employed to estimate the rate of escape of a Brownian particle from a cavity with semipermeable wall. © 2012 American Institute of Physics