An error bound for the slender body approximation of a thin, rigid fiber sedimenting in Stokes flow

Abstract

We investigate the motion of a thin rigid body in Stokes flow and the corresponding slender body approximation used to model sedimenting fibers. In particular, we derive a rigorous error bound comparing the rigid slender body approximation to the classical PDE for rigid motion in the case of a closed loop with constant radius. Our main tool is the slender body PDE framework established by the authors and D. Spirn in [18,19], which we adapt to the rigid setting.