Prediction of the viscosity of solid–liquid mixtures using a virtual viscometer based on computational fluid dynamics.

We developed a 3D rotational viscometer model based on the finite volume method and analyzed the effects of the shear rate, glass bead solid fraction, and particle size on the viscosity of water and maltose syrup. We developed a novel Gidaspow model and introduced particle sphericity as a parameter. The effects of sphericity, solid fraction, and particle size on the viscosity of different fluids were simulated and calculated. Compared with the experimental findings, the maximum relative error was 10.7% before the solid fraction was 30%, and the calculated data suitably agree with the experimental results. The results also show that when the solid fraction is above 10%, the particle fluid viscosity increases with increasing shear rate and solid fraction and decreases with increasing sphericity and particle size. The novel Gidaspow equation can suitably predict the initial apparent viscosity of different solid–liquid mixtures before reaching a solid fraction of 50%. The new model has a wide range of applications and can be applied to arbitrary particle shapes (spherical range of 0–1) in various materials and fields. The proposed model can provide a reference for further theoretical and experimental studies on solid–liquid two-phase flow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]