Effective viscosity of semidilute suspensions of rigid ellipsoids

Abstract

Hard and refractory particles with various shapes have been added to ceramic materials to enhance creep resistance. Also, many of the particles in food emulsions, magnetic particle suspensions, and other industrial systems may have nonspherical shapes. Hence, it is important to understand the effects of particle shape on the viscosity of suspensions. While the shape of many particles can be approximated as prolate or oblate spheroids, the purpose of the present study is to model the effective viscosity of semidilute suspensions of rigid ellipsoids. Closed-form expressions are obtained; however, their formulations are formidable. For the special cases of rodlike or disklike particles, simple closed-form expressions can be obtained. The present solutions are compared with existing solutions.