Dispersion of sound in dilute suspensions with nonlinear particle relaxation.

The theory accounting for nonlinear particle relaxation (viscous and thermal) has been applied to the prediction of dispersion of sound in dilute suspensions. The results suggest that significant deviations exist for sound dispersion between the linear and nonlinear theories at large values of omegatau(d), where omega is the circular frequency and tau(d) is the Stokesian particle relaxation time. It is revealed that the nonlinear effect on the dispersion coefficient due to viscous contribution is larger relative to that of thermal conduction.