Creeping flow past a porous approximate sphere

Abstract

This paper concerns the creeping flow of incompressible viscous fluid past and through a porous approximate sphere. The Brinkman model for the flow inside the porous particle and Stokes model for the flow outside the particle in their stream function formulations are used. The stream function and the pressure distribution, both for the flow inside and outside are obtained in terms of Bessel and Gegenbauer functions of the first kind. The drag force experienced by the particle is determined and its variation with respect to permeability parameter is studied numerically. The special cases of flow past a porous sphere and spheroid are obtained from the present analysis