Sedimentation of particle suspensions in Stokes flows

Abstract

In this thesis, we consider problems arising from the physical phenomenon of particle sedimentation. We focus on non-Brownian particles in fluids at zero Reynolds number. Microscopically, the particle system is described by a system of ordinary differential equations that determine the particle trajectories which is coupled to a partial differential equation for the fluid flow. The objective of this thesis is the rigorous derivation of macroscopic equations from microscopic particle dynamics as well as the analysis of such macroscopic equations.