Effective Viscosity of Suspensions

The effective viscosity of a suspension of particles in a fluid medium is greater than that of the pure fluid, owing to the energy dissipation within the electrical double layers. 

With some concentrated suspensions of solid particles, particularly those in which the liquid has a relatively low viscosity, the suspension appears to slip at the pipe wall or at the solid surfaces of a viscometer. Slip occurs because the suspension is depleted of particles in the vicinity of the solid surface. In the case of concentrated suspensions, the main reason is probably that of physical exclusion if the suspension at the solid surface were to have the same spatial distribution of particles as that in the bulk, some particles would have to overlap the wall. As a result of the lower concentration of particles in the immediate vicinity of the wall, the effective viscosity of the suspension near the wall may be significantly lower than that of the bulk and consequently this wall layer may have an extremely high shear rate. If this happens, the bulk material appears to slip on this lubricating layer of low viscosity material. 

Brownian motion must be taken into account for suspensions of small (submicron-sized) particles. By their very nature, such stochastic Brownian forces favor the ergodicity of any configurational state. Although no completely general framework for the inclusion of Brownian motion will be presented here, its effects will be incorporated within specific contexts. Especially relevant, in the present rheological context, is the recent review by Felderhof (1988) of the contribution of Brownian motion to the viscosity of suspensions of spherical particles. 

Patzold (1980) compared the viscosities of suspensions of spheres in simple shear and extensional flows and obtained significant differences, which were qualitatively explained by invoking various flow-dependent sphere arrangements. Goto and Kuno (1982) measured the apparent relative viscosities of carefully controlled bidisperse particle mixtures. The larger particles, however, possessed a diameter nearly one-fourth that of the tube through which they flowed, suggesting the inadvertant intrusion of unwanted wall effects. 

Another fractal structure of interest is considered by Adler (1986). A three-dimensional fractal suspension may be constructed from a modified Menger sponge, as shown in Fig. 7(b). A scaling argument permitted calculating the effective viscosity of such a suspension however, this viscosity should be compared with numerical results for the solution of Stokes equations in such a geometry before this rheological result is accepted unequivocally. 

At very low shear rates (i.e., flow velocities), particles in a chemically stable suspension approximately follow the layers of constant velocities, as indicated in Fig. 2. But at higher shear rates hydro-dynamic forces drive particles out of layers of constant velocity. The competition between hydrodynamic forces that distort the microstructure of the suspension and drive particles together, and the Brownian motion and repulsive interparticle forces keeping particles apart, leads to a shear dependency of the viscosity of suspensions. These effects depend on the effective volume fraction of... 

The effective viscosity of a suspension of particles of types other than rigid particles has also been theoretically investigated. Taylor [22] proposed a theory of the electroviscous effect in a suspension of uncharged liquid drops. This theory has been extended to the case of charged liquid drops by Ohshima [17]. Natraj and Chen [23] developed a theory for charged porous spheres, and Allison et al. [24] and Allison and Xin [25] discussed the case of polyelectrolyte-coated particles. 

In this chapter, we first present a theory of the primary electroviscous effect in a dilute suspension of soft particles, that is, particles covered with an ion-penetrable surface layer of charged or uncharged polymers. We derive expressions for the effective viscosity and the primary electroviscous coefficient of a dilute suspension of soft particles [26]. We then derive an expression for the effective viscosity of uncharged porous spheres (i.e., spherical soft particles with no particle core) [27]. 

Approximate results calculated via Eq. (27.57) are also shown as dotted lines in Fig. 27.2. It is seen that Ka > 100, the agreement with the exact result is excellent. The presence of a minimum of L Ka, la, alb) as a function of Ka can be explained qualitatively with the help of Eq. (27.57) as follows. That is, L Ka, la, alb) is proportional to 1/k at small Ka and to k at large Ka, leading to the presence of a minimum of L Ka, la, alb). As is seen in Fig. 27.3, for the case of a suspension of hard particles, the function L ko) decreases as Ka increases, exhibiting no minimum. This is the most remarkable difference between the effective viscosity of a suspension of soft particles and that for hard particles. It is to be noted that although L Ka, la, alb) increases with Ka at large Ka, the primary electroviscous coefficient p itself decreases with increasing electrolyte concentration. The reason is that the... 

EFFECTIVE VISCOSITY OF A CONCENTRATED SUSPENSION 527 surface potential J/o, which becomes for large Ka (Eq. (4.29))... 

EFFECTIVE VISCOSITY OF A CONCENTRATED SUSPENSION OF UNCHARGED POROUS SPHERES... 

We have shown that the effective viscosity of concentrated suspension of uncharged porous spheres of radius a and volume fraction in a liquid is given by Eq. (27.68) (as combined with Eq. (27.74)). The coefficient Q(2a, (f)) expresses how the presence of porous spheres affects the viscosity tjs of the original liquid. 

The effect of particle size distribution on the viscosities of suspensions and emulsions has been investigated (28, 32-35). Most of these studies indicate that the effect of particle size distribution is of enormous magnitude... 

As the suppository base is heated before moulding, certain effects can be noted which are unique to this type of medication. Testosterone dissolves when hot in the semisynthetic excipient Witepsol H, to give, on cooling, crystals of about 2-3 /rm in diameter. After dissolution in theobroma oil, the dmg does not crystallise on cooling but remains dissolved as a solid solution. In the former case, high absorption rates are obtained, while in the latter poor absorption is achieved. Because of the effect of particle size on the viscosity of suspensions (see section 7.4.4) it is preferable to avoid the incorporation of ultra-fine crystals as the resultant melt of suspension has a higher viscosity than those produced from coarser crystals. 

With increasing shear, Pe — the relative viscosity of suspensions — usually decreases (see Fig. 6.19). This shear thinning effect is quite moderate in colloidally stable suspensions, which actually can behave as nearly Newtonian up to... 

The velocity field given by (7-185) will be used later to estimate heat transfer rates for spherical particles in a straining flow. Here, we focus on a different application of (7 185), namely, its use in predicting the effective viscosity of a dilute suspension of solid spheres. To carry out the calculation, it is first necessary to briefly discuss the properties of a suspension in a more general framework. 

Problem 7-22. The Viscosity of a Multicomponent Membrane. An interesting generalization of the Einstein calculation of the effective viscosity of a dilute suspension of spheres is to consider the same problem in two dimensions. This is relevant to the effective viscosities of some types of multicomponent membranes. Obtain the Einstein viscosity correction at small Reynolds number for a dilute suspension of cylinders of radii a whose axes are all aligned. Although there is no solution to Stokes equations for a translating cylinder, there is a solution for a force- and torque-free cylinder in a 2D straining flow. The result is... 

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