Generalized hydrodynamics of a dilute suspension of finite-sized particles: Dynamic viscosity

Abstract

We present a mesoscopic hydrodynamic description of the dynamics of colloidal suspensions. We consider the system as a gas of Brownian particles suspended in a Newtonian heat bath subjected to stationary nonequilibrium conditions imposed by a velocity field. By means of a generalized Fokker-Planck equation, we obtain a set of coupled differential equations for the local diffusion current and the evolution of the total stress tensor. We find that the dynamic shear viscosity of the system contains contributions arising from the finite size of the particles.