Wall-induced lift on a sphere

Abstract The lateral migration of rigid spheres sedimenting near a large flat vertical wall, in a quiescent Newtonian fluid, has been studied experimentally. The migration velocities were measured by recording the trajectory of the spheres as they sedimented near a wall for the particle Re range 0.1–10.0. The measurements indicate that the expression derived by Vasseur & Cox [J. Fluid Mech. 80, 561–591 (1977)] predicts, fairly accurately, the migration velocity up to a particle Re of 3.0.