Earlier ideas are combined to produce a systematic approach both to forming the bulk equations of motion of a dilute suspension and to calculating the overall hydrodynamic interactions between the suspended particles. Equations governing averaged field quantities are derived by taking ensemble averages of the conservation laws and constitutive relations. The bulk equations thus produced contain a term in which the averaging is performed holding one particle fixed. If now the same prescription is applied to fields averaged with one particle fixed, equations are produced containing a term averaged with two particles fixed, and so on up an infinite hierarchy. The hierarchy can be truncated in an asymptotic analysis for small particle concentrations.

This approach to the mechanics of suspensions is illustrated by applying it to three problems which have already been well studied by different methods. The problems concern the first effects of hydrodynamic interactions on the bulk stress and sedimentation velocity of a free suspension, and on the permeability of a fixed bed. Earlier results are recovered in a new light. Multiparticle effects, which before have occurred as divergent sums, are seen to arise because the suspension described by the averaged equations assumes a viscosity and density different from the solvent, or in the case of the fixed bed because the suspension starts behaving as a porous medium instead of as a Newtonian solvent. A close connexion is thus revealed between the averaged-equation description of the interactions and a self-consistent-field model.