Paper presented at the 8th International Conference on Heat Transfer, Fluid Mechanics and Thermodynamics, Mauritius, 11-13 July, 2011.
New fundamental solutions for micropolar fluids have been
obtained in explicit form by considering Stokes and Oseen
flows due to a point force and a point couple. Fundamental
solutions that do not exist in Newtonian flows have emerged in
this paper owning to the existence of microrotational velocity
field in micropolar fluids. The newly-found fundamental
solutions, together with the representations that have been
derived based on Oseen approximation, are believed to be
useful in seeking for new solutions to microscale flow
problems. These flow problems are not trivial, as dealing with
rheologically complex fluids and the mechanics of fluids at
microscale, where Newtonian fluid theories have been found to
be invalid there.
