Laminar and turbulent pipe flow of bentonite suspensions

• Study of the rheology and hydrodynamic behavior of complex fluids in pipe flow.
• Using a Ultrasonic Pulsed Doppler Velocimetry technique.
• The velocimeter used is in-house design, fully developed in the laboratory.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate rheology and hydrodynamic behavior of different mass concentration of bentonite suspensions in pipe flow. Bentonite suspensions exhibited shear thinning and yield stress non-Newtonian rheological behavior. Most of the data reported are for the laminar and turbulent flow, data are also included the start-up flow development. The axial velocity distribution was determined using a Ultrasonic Pulsed Doppler Velocimetry technique.The experimental results show a progressive destructuration of the suspensions in the entrance region due to the segregation of the structural elements of the fluid and tend to a steady state and a fully developed laminar pipe flow. In the majority of cases, axisymmetric flow is observed for both laminar and turbulent flow conditions. Also an asymmetry characterizes the axial velocity profiles in the laminar-turbulent transitional flow.In the laminar regime, the flow parameters were fitted by using the Herschel–Bulkley model. For the turbulent flow, the Dodge and Metzner model was applied to fit the experimental data.