Low Reynolds Number Particle-Fluid Interactions.

The focus of this dissertation is the analysis of torque and drag coefficients, for the steady rotation of spheres in an infinite viscous fluid, and for axisymmetric viscous flow past linear arrays of spheres, respectively. The exact solutions for such torque and drag coefficients are unknown if the number of spheres under consideration is greater than two. A new approximation method, the boundary value approximation method, is developed herein for treating such problems. When used in conjunction with the collocation method (10), upper and lower bounds are obtained for the exact solution, accurate to within 1.6%.