Shear‐Induced Diffusion in Dilute Suspensions of Charged Colloids

Abstract

We propose a model for the nonequilibrium enhancement of colloidal self‐diffusion in an externally imposed shear flow in charged systems. The diffusion enhancement is calculated in terms of electrostatic, two‐body interactions between the particles in shear flow. In the high‐shear rate, low‐volume fraction limit in which the model is valid, we compare these calculations to the experiments of Qiu et al. [PRL 61, 2554 (1988)] and simulations of Chakrabarti et al. [PRE 50, R3326 (1994)] and find good agreement on scaling and magnitude to within experimental uncertainty of the electrostatic parameters.

Keywords:

• PACS numbers
• 47.15.Pn
• 51.20 + d
• 83.80Hj

Acknowledgments

VB was supported by the Netherlands Organization for Scientific Research (NWO). AJL acknowledges support by the NSF under award DMR‐9870785. We thank D. Pine, S. Ramaswamy, and A. Sood for useful and enjoyable discussion.

Notes

^aWe note that similar arguments were made in Ref. [15].