A study on the limitations of a vane rheometer for mineral suspensions using image processing

This study presents the results from the rheological measurement of clay suspensions using vane geometry in a wide gap configuration. It focuses on how measurement of viscosity cannot be effective for two reasons: the limits of the vane geometry itself and the limits of the material depending on its content of solid particles. Image analysis of the flow while shearing the material is carried out to relate the flow behavior. Several approaches to compute the shear flow curve from torque-rotational velocity data are used. The results demonstrate that the applied setpoint while applying a logarithmic shear rate ramp can be very different from the calculated shear rate from existing theories. Depending on the solid volume fraction of the particles in the mixture, we relate the macroscopic behavior using image analysis and the shear flow curves to the rheophysical regime of the flow of the suspensions. Therefore, this paper has two simultaneous goals: the first one is to describe the physical phenomena which control macroscopic behavior and the second one is to highlight the limits of the vane geometry for viscosity measurement of mineral suspensions like kaolinite pastes.