Non-Newtonian Fluid Mechanics Laboratory

This facility is used to study the flow of nonlinear viscoplastic fluids relevant to several petrolium, plastics and food industries. It consists of fluid mixing equipment to obtain mixtures of fluids with various rheological characteristics, several rheometers to characterize the non-Newtonian fluids created and a closed-circuit flow system to study laminar separation of complex fluids. The lab also uses LDV, PIV systems for velocity measurements and a flow visualization apparatus. The challenge is to create fluids with desired rheological characteristics (such as yield stress and power index) which are optically transparent for non-intrusive measurements.

 Past and Present Participants:

Volkan Otugen (Faculty)

George Vradis (Faculty)

Khaled Hammad (Ph.D. Student)

Engin Arik (Vice President, Dantec)

Experimental setup

 

Suddenly Expanding Axisymmetric Flow of a Yield-Stress Fluid top half computations; bottom half flow visualization

  

PIV measurements comparing the Newtonian and non-Newtonian flows at a fixed Reynolds number.

 

 

References:

Hammad, K.J., Wang, F.Y, Otugen, M.V., and Vradis, G., "Suddenly Expanding Axisymmetric Flow of a Yield Stress Fluid", Album of Flow Vis. Vol. 14, 1997

Hammad, K.J., Otugen, M.V., Vradis, G. and Arik, E. B., "Laminar Flow of a Non-Linear Viscoplastic Fluid Through an Axisymmetric Sudden Expansion", J. Fluids Eng., Vol. 121, pp. 488-495, 1999