Experimental investigation of the settling velocity of spherical particles in Power-law fluids using particle image shadowgraph technique

•Measured settling velocity of a spherical particles in Power-law fluid using PIS•Proposed a model for settling velocity of a spherical particle in Power law fluid•New model predicts the settling velocity with an average error of 10%.

In this study, a new experimental technique, particle image shadowgraphy, is used to measure the settling velocities of spherical particles (0.5 mm–2.0 mm) in Power-law fluids of variable viscosity and density. Different concentrations of CMC-water mixtures (0.14–0.28 wt%) are used as test fluids for the experiments. A new empirical equation, which is an improved version of the Shah et al. (2007) model, for predicting the settling velocity of a spherical particle in Power-law fluid is proposed. The new empirical model is found to give an average error of 10% in predicting the settling velocity.