Shear-induced self-diffusion in concentrated suspensions

Suspensions consist of solid particles dispersed in a liquid. In practice they are for example used for large-scale transport of particulate materials like sand. During oil and gas drilling suspensions are utilized for the transport of rock cuttings. Furthermore they can be found in industry in the production of foods, paint and paper. Knowledge of the flow properties of suspensions is therefore of practical interest and forms an important research area in rheology. This thesis contains the results of an experimental investigation of ’shear-induced diffusion’. It is by now well-known that individual particles in concentrated suspensions of non-colloidal particles (> 10 μm) exhibit a fluctuating motion under influence of an externally applied flow field. The process can be characterized as diffusion and is caused by the fact that particles on neighbouring streamlines are forced to pass each other. The interactions are asymmetrical and lead to particle displacements

Shear-induced diffusion and rheology of noncolloidal suspensions: time scales and particle displacements

The shear-induced self-diffusion and rheology of concentrated suspensions of noncolloidal hard spheres have been studied experimentally. The combined results provide an interesting physical picture. The projection of the trajectories of individual particles on the vorticity (z)–velocity (x) plane were determined through particle tracking. The particle trajectories turned out to be very useful for gaining qualitative insight into the microscopic particle motion. However, the technique is less suitable to obtain quantitative information. For a quantitative analysis of the particle displacements we measured the evolution of the ensemble averaged displacements as a function of time. The statistical analysis revealed two diffusion regimes, where 〈ΔzΔz〉 ∼ Δt. For large strain values (Δt>1) long-time self-diffusion was observed. The associated diffusion coefficient ∞ is in excellent agreement with literature data on shear-induced self-diffusion. On very short times (Δt≪1) a novel diffusive regime was discovered, characterized by a diffusion coefficient 0, which is significantly smaller than ∞ and grows monotonically with ϕ. 0 is detected on time scales on which the particle configuration is not changed significantly and thus it must represent the fluctuating motion of particles in the “cage” formed by their nearest neighbors. Finally, the rheology was studied with steady shear and oscillatory rheometry. The dynamic measurements in a controlled stress rheometer revealed that the viscoelastic response of the suspension is determined mainly by the amplitude of deformation. At small strain amplitudes γ0<1, the response is linear and a dynamic viscosity η′ is found, which is in excellent agreement with the high frequency limit η∞′ as reported in literature for colloidal hard sphere suspensions. Around γ0 = 1 the “cage” around a particle is deformed and a shear-induced microstructure is built. This leads to O(a) displacements of the particles and the viscoelastic response becomes strongly nonharmonic. Although the effect persists at large amplitudes, it becomes relatively small for γ0≫1. The microstructure is rearranged immediately after flow reversal and remains unchanged for the larger part of the period of oscillation. As a result a pseudolinear viscoelastic regime is found with a viscosity close to steady shear viscosity. Experiments show a correlation between the time scales controlling the 0/∞ diffusive behavior and the ones controlling the shear-induced changes in particle configuration as probed by the rheological measurements