Possible Effects of the Diffusion of Structural Elements on the Rheology of Shear Flows

Abstract

In this paper, the combination of structural changes and diffusion in dispersion flows is considered. It is assumed that size and shape of microstructures generated in dispersions depend on flow properties, i.e., shear rate or shear stress. These structures can be transported by diffusive processes. Possible transport mechanisms are Brownian motion and hydrodynamic diffusion. The combination of structure formation and transport may have effects on the flow and thereby on the rheology of such dispersions. For example, an apparent wall slip or pseudo wall slip may occur due to a structural change near walls.

Transport phenomena and structuring in shear flow of suspensions near solid walls

“…Alternatively, the experimental material can be frozen and analyzed by an NMR spectroscope and a three dimensional porosity distribution can be extracted from the data. Details of the experiment which is currently under development can be found in [39,40,41,42].…”