Resistance of a sphere in a slow flow of a viscoelastic fluid

The authors have obtained an approximate solution of the problem of the resistance of a rigid sphere in a slow flow of a Maxwell viscoelastic fluid that is in good agreement with experimental data 1] for Weissenberg numbers We ≤ 0.7. It is shown that the effect of a decrease in the coefficient of resistance of a sphere in the interval 0.1 ≤ We ≤ 0.7 established experimentally is determined in full measure by the linear viscoelastic properties of the Maxwell fluid. Translated from Inzhenerno-Fizicheskii Zhurnal, Vol. 71, No. 6, pp. 1138–1140, November–December, 1998.