Experimental investigations of the transport properties of flow suspensions. 1: Measurement of velocity distributions of suspension flows in a rectangular channel. 2: Experimental study of the effective thermal conductivity in shear flow of a suspension. 3: The use of fluorescence correlation spectroscopy to measure molecular diffusion and velocity distributions

An experimental method capable of measuring the velocities of both the dispersed and suspending phases of a flowing suspension was developed. The method was shown to be capable of measuring the velocity distributions of moderately concentrated suspensions. By using a modified laser Doppler anemometer, the velocity distribution of the suspended fluid was approximated by measuring the velocity of small fluorescent tracers, while the scattered signal from the suspended particles gave a direct measurement of their velocity distribution. The measurements of the effective thermal conductivity of sheared suspension of rigid spherical particles are also described. The objective was to verify the theoretical prediction of Leal (1973) for a dilute suspension undergoing shear at low particle Peclet number, and to extend the range of the experiments to conditions beyond the scope of the theory. Surprisingly, reasonable agreement with the theoretical prediction was observed even for suspensions of moderate concentrations and higher Peclet numbers. An analysis on the use of fluorescence correlation spectroscopy to measure molecular diffusion and velocity distributions in a sheared flow is also presented.