Viscoelastic responses of flow driven by a permeable disk investigated by ultrasound velocity profiling

Ultrasound velocity profiling was applied to viscoelastic flow induced around a moving permeable disk. There were two objectives to this measurement. The first was to find technical advantages and restrictions when applying ultrasonic Doppler velocimetry to a viscoelastic liquid. This issue has not been clarified even though ultrasonic pulses may interact with an elastic medium in the monitoring of the Doppler shift frequency. The second objective was to determine the fluid physics of a viscoelastic liquid around a permeable object, which will help in designing mixing process for materials subject to strong rheological resistance. In this paper, we report a representative response of a viscoelastic liquid in terms of its spatiotemporal velocity distribution. The response highlighted is cyclic lateral waves that form behind the disk, which were hardly detectable by particle image velocimetry. We discuss multiple reasons for this phenomenon considering not only fluid properties but also the measurement principle of ultrasound velocity profiling as applied to viscoelastic liquid.