Modeling effective viscosity reduction behaviour of solid suspensions

Under a simple shearing flow, the effective viscosity of solid suspensions can be reduced by controlling the inclusion particle size or the number of inclusion particles in a unit volume. Based on the Stokes equation, the transformation field method is used to model the reduction behaviour of effective viscosity of solid suspensions theoretically by enlarging the particle size at a given high concentration of particles. With a lot of samples of random cubic particles in a unit cell, our statistical results show that at the same higher concentration, the effective viscosity of solid suspensions can be reduced by increasing the particle size or reducing the number of inclusion particles in a unit volume. This work discloses the viscosity reduction mechanism of increasing particle size, which is observed experimentally.