Virtual mass force is an indispensable component in the momentum balance involved with dispersed particles in a multiphase system. In this work the accelerating motion of a single solid particle is mathematically formulated and solved using the vorticity-stream function formulation in an orthogonal curvilinear coordinate system. The total drag coefficient was evaluated from the numerical simulation in a range of the Reynolds number (

Re

) from 10 to 200 and the dimensionless acceleration (

A

) between 2.0 to 2.0. The simulation demonstrates that the total drag is heavily correlated with

A

and large deceleration even drops the drag force to a negative value. It is found that the value of virtual mass force coefficient (

C

V

) of a spherical particle is a variable in a wide range and difficult to be correlated with

A

and

Re

. However

the total drag coefficient (

C

DV

) is successfully correlated as a function of

Re

and

A

and it increases as

A

is increased. The proposed correlation of total drag coefficient may be used for simulation of solid–liquid flow with better accuracy.