Deep bed filtration of liquid media is a unit process step with a wide range of applications. For the description of both the impact and the adhesion probability of particles many publications and theories are available. This paper investigates in detail the influence of the viscous force theory in combination with the roughness of participating solids on the filtration process. The proposed model illustrates the necessity of including the energy dissipation by the disjoining liquid film in the modeling of deep bed filtration processes. Furthermore, the model can be used in order to estimate the influence of roughness, particle size and viscosity on the probability of particle impact and adhesion. (C) 2015 Published by Elsevier B.V.