Wall adhesion and constitutive modeling of strong colloidal gels

Abstract

Wall adhesion effects during batch sedimentation of strongly flocculated colloidal gels are commonly assumed to be negligible. In this study, in-situ measurements of gel rheology and solids volume fraction distribution suggest the contrary, where significant wall adhesion effects are observed in a 110mm diameter settling column. We develop and validate a mathematical model for the equilibrium stress state in the presence of wall adhesion under both viscoplastic and viscoelastic constitutive models. These formulations highlight fundamental issues regarding the constitutive modeling of colloidal gels, specifically the relative utility and validity of viscoplastic and viscoelastic rheological models under arbitrary tensorial loadings. The developed model is validated against experimental data, which points toward a novel method to estimate the shear and compressive yield strength of strongly flocculated colloidal gels from a series of equilibrium solids volume fraction profiles over various column widths