On the trajectory of a light small rigid body in an incompressible viscous fluid

Abstract

In this paper we study the dynamics of a small rigid body in a viscous incompressible fluid in dimension two and three. More precisely we investigate the trajectory of the rigid body in the limit when the its mass and its size tend to zero. We show that the velocity of the center of mass of the rigid body coincides with the background fluid velocity in the limit. We are able to consider the case where the density of the small rigid body is uniformly bounded respect to its size.