Chaining of weakly interacting particles suspended in viscoelastic fluids

An asymptotic theory based on multipole expansions is presented for multiparticle interactions in unbounded, weakly viscoelastic, creeping flows. The theory accounts for non-Newtonian sphere–sphere interactions that are of order O(De(a/R)2)O(De(a/R)2), where De is the Deborah number, a the sphere radius and R is the sphere–sphere separation. Analytic expressions are derived for the non-Newtonian correction to the multisphere mobility matrix for non-neutrally buoyant sedimenting spheres, and for neutrally buoyant spheres suspended in a shear flow. It is shown that these expressions give rise to particle chaining in simulations of interacting spherical particles.