Extension of the Poiseuille Formula for Shear-thickening Materials and Application to Self-compacting Concrete

Abstract

In practice, while placing concrete in a formwork by pumping, the pressure generated by the pump is not controlled. In order to enhance the safety on the worksite, and in view of the current economic and ecologic arguments, it would be useful to dispose of an equation able to predict pressure losses based on the rheological properties of the concrete and the pipe configuration. This paper describes the derivation of an extended version of the Poiseuille formula, for shear-thickening materials with a yields stress, described by the modified Bingham equation. This formula is applied to flow-tests with self-compacting concrete. The results prove the applicability of this extended Poiseuille formula, showing that the flow is occurring in laminar regime, with no significant wall slip.

Keywords

• yield stress
• shear-thickening
• laminar flow
• poiseuille formula
• self-compacting concrete