Shear Rate Corrections for Herschel-Bulkley Fluids in Couette Geometry

Abstract

A methodology is presented to invert the flow equation of a Herschel-Bulkley fluid in Couette concentric cylinder geometry, thus enabling simultaneous computation of the true shear rates, γ̇HB, and of the three Herschel-Bulkley rheological parameters. The errors made when these rheological parameters are computed using Newtonian shear rates, γ̇N, as it is normal practice by research and industry personnel, can then be estimated. Quantification of these errors has been performed using narrow gap viscometer data from literature, with most of them taken with oil-field rheometers. The results indicate that significant differences exist between the yield stress and the flow behavior index computed using γ̇HB versus the parameters obtained using γ̇N and this is an outcome of the higher γ̇HB values. Predicted true shear rates and rheological parameters are in very good agreement with results reported by other investigators, who have followed different approaches to invert the flow equation, both for yield-pseudoplastic and power-law fluids.

Keywords

• herschel-bulkley fluid
• couette viscometry
• shear rates