Flow and blockage of highly concentrated granular suspensions in non-Newtonian fluid

Studying the flow of highly concentrated granular suspensions represents a great challenge since they are characterized by a rather complex rheological behavior. In addition, macroscopic heterogeneities may be induced by the flow during rheological measurements due to the eventual relative motion between the liquid and the granular phases that may take place under certain conditions. Solid–liquid separation may ultimately lead to flow blockage. In the present investigation we consider experimentally the influence of the rheological properties of the suspending fluid on the transition between the flow and blockage of a concentrated suspension in a squeeze set-up geometry. The suspending fluid consists of an aqueous Xanthan solution for which rheological properties can be tuned by changing the polymer concentration. For each polymer concentration, it is shown that there exist flow parameters (squeeze velocity and gap thickness) for which one has a transition between homogeneous flow of the suspension and its blockage. Blockage diagrams, delimiting flowability and blockage zones, are then determined. Physical arguments are given to relate the evolution of the blockage diagrams to the flow parameters and rheological properties of suspending fluid.