Hydrodynamic theory of polydisperse chain-forming ferrofluids

Abstract

The larger magnetic particles in ferrofluids are known to form chains, causing the fluid to display non-Newtonian behavior. In this paper, a generalization of the familiar ferrofluid dynamics by Shliomis is shown capable of realistically accounting for these fluids. The modification consists of identifying the relaxing magnetization as that of the chain-forming particles, while accounting for the free magnetic particles by dissipative terms in the Maxwell equations.