Effect of visco-plastic and shear-thickening/thinning characteristics on non-Newtonian flow through a pipe bend

TLDR: In this article, the influence of the rheological parameters on the unyielded zone, pressure drop, and secondary flow pattern of non-Newtonian fluid like fresh cement mortar through a pipe bend with different curvatures was investigated.

Abstract: This study investigates the influence of the rheological parameters on the unyielded zone, pressure drop, and secondary flow pattern of non-Newtonian fluid like fresh cement mortar through a pipe bend with different curvatures. The regularized Herschel–Bulkley model is employed in the framework of lattice Boltzmann method to model the effects of the visco-plastic and shear-thickening/thinning characteristics with variations on the yielding stress σ0 and the power-law index n. The sharper curvature, higher power-law index contributes to a smaller and more asymmetric unyielded zone and even vanishes for curvature radius R c = 1 D and n = 1.4, as the width and distribution of plug region are governed by the comparison between yielding stress and shear stress. The increased yielding stress and power-law index lead to an increase in the total pressure drop and additional pressure loss; however, their variations with respect to the curvature radius display an opposite trend. The intensity of the helical secondary flow in the elbow, primarily governed by the competition between the centrifugal and viscous force, is reduced to about one quarter when σ0 and n increase from 0 Pa and 0.6 to 50 Pa and 1.4.