FLOWS OF NEUTRALLY BUOYANT SUSPENSIONS IN SEVERAL VISCOMETERS

Abstract

The theory developed by Jiang et al. (1987) for a flowing suspension of neutrally buoyant spheres in an incompressible Newtonian fluid is further tested for a limiting case of the Couette viscometer, for a limiting case of the cone-plate viscometer, and for the parallel-plate viscometer. Compared with the available data for the Couette viscometer, the average errors are less than 2.6% for y < 0.10, 4.2% for y < 0.15, and 5.5% for y < 0.20. The predictions of its limiting case for very dilute suspensions are capable of representing these data with errors less than 4% for y < 0.08.

KEYWORDS:

• Suspension
• Apparent viscosity
• Effective viscosity
• Couette viscometer
• Cone-plate viscometer
• Parallel-plate viscometer

Additional information

Notes on contributors

MICHAEL H. KIM

Explosion Science and Engineering, IIT Research Institute, 10 W. 35th St., Chicago, IL 60616.

TSUNG-SHANN JIANG

Department of Chemical and Biochemical Engineering, Rutgers—The State University P O Box 909, Piscataway, NJ 08854.