Influence of each cylinder’s contribution on the total effective viscosity of a two-dimensional suspension by a two-way coupling scheme

Einstein’s viscosity formula is sometimes strongly limited for viscosity estimation of suspensions; that is, it is only applicable for low-concentration suspensions in which hydrodynamic interactions are sufficiently negligible. In particular, hydrodynamic interactions between particles (cylinders in two dimensions) should be taken into consideration when finite-size particles are suspended. Therefore, change in the microstructure, i.e., spatial arrangement of particles in the flow field, is important for understanding mechanism of suspension rheology. In order to provide better practical applications for viscosity estimation instead of Einstein’s formula, we investigated the influence of each cylinder’s contribution on the total effective viscosity of a suspension with finite-size cylinders considering the microstructure, especially in terms of cylinder-wall and cylinder-cylinder distances. Two-dimensional pressure-driven flow simulations were performed using the regularized lattice Boltzmann method and a two-way coupling scheme. The rigid circular cylinders suspended in a Newtonian fluid were assumed to be neutrally buoyant and non-Brownian. As a result, we found that both distances between cylinders and cylinder-wall are significant for viscosity estimation. In addition, the effective viscosity can be estimated accurately when the confinement is sufficiently low ( C ≈ 0.04). It can be stated that the microstructure of the suspension is one of the promising factors to estimate and control suspension rheology.