On the Trajectory of a Light Small Rigid Body in an Incompressible Viscous Fluid

Abstract

In this paper, we study the dynamics of a small rigid body in a viscous incompressible fluid in dimension two and three. More precisely we investigate the trajectory of the rigid body in the limit when its mass and its size tend to zero. We show that the velocity of the center of mass of the rigid body coincides with the background fluid velocity in the limit. We are able to consider the limit when the volume of the rigid bodies converges to zero while their densities are a fixed constant.