Sedimentation of inertialess particles in Stokes flows (Q1637284)

The paper studies the sedimentation of a cload of rigid, spherical particles of identical radii under gravity in a Stokes fluid. The author deduces the following system of equations: \(\dot X_i=V_i\), \(X_i(0)=X_i^0\), \(-\Delta v+\nabla p=0\) in \(\mathbb R^3 \setminus \bigcup_{i=1}^N \overline B_i\), \(\nabla \cdot v=0\) in \(\mathbb R^3\), \(v=V_i\) in \(\overline B_i\), \(v(x)\to 0\) as \(|x|\to \infty \), \(\int_{\partial B_i}\sigma n=F\). The unique solvability of this system is proved.