An experimental study of multimodal glass suspension rheology to test and validate a polydisperse suspension viscosity model

Experimental measurements of non-colloidal multimodal suspension viscosities are performed over a wide range of mixing ratios and used to test the robustness and predictive capability of a recent viscosity model (Mwasame et al. in Phys Fluids 28:061701, 2016b), subsequently referred to as the MWB model. Three unimodally distributed particle suspensions with narrow size distributions are blended to make the bimodal and trimodal suspensions used in the rheological experiments. We demonstrate how predictions for mixture viscosities can be made using the MWB model only requiring the volume-weighted average particle sizes and viscosity correlations of the individual unimodal suspensions comprising the blend. The resultant model predictions are found to be in good agreement with measured bimodal and trimodal viscosity data to within expected experimental uncertainty. The datasets provided here can be used to validate future modeling efforts, and the MWB model can be used to optimize the viscosity of multimodal suspension mixtures for specific performance criteria.