Motion of a distant solid particle in a shear flow along a porous slab

The motion of a solid and no-slipping particle immersed in a shear flow along a sufficiently porous slab is investigated. The fluid flow outside and inside of the slab is governed by the Stokes and Darcy equations, respectively, and the so-called Beavers and Joseph slip boundary conditions are enforced on the slab surface. The problem is solved for a distant particle with length scale a in terms of the small parameter a/d where d designates the large particle-slab separation. This is achieved by asymptotically inverting a relevant boundary-integral equation on the particle surface, which has been recently proposed for any particle location (distant or close particle) in Khabthani et al. (J Fluid Mech 713:271-306, 2012). It is found that at order O(a/d) the slab behaves for any particle shape as a solid plane no-slip wall while the slab properties (thickness, permeability, associated slip length) solely enter at O((a/d)²). Moreover, for a spherical particle, the numerical results published in Khabthani et al. (J Fluid Mech 713:271-306, 2012) perfectly agree with the present asymptotic analysis.