Velocity and concentration studies of flowing suspensions by nuclear magnetic resonance imaging. Final report, October 7, 1994--October 6, 1996

Nuclear magnetic resonance imaging techniques were developed to study concentrated suspension flows. The tasks completed were: (1) materials selection for imaging of both particle and fluid components, (2) pipe flow measurements, and (3) flows in complex geometries. The partially completed task is the development of rapid imaging techniques by analog compensation of eddy currents, generated by the gradient pulses, and real-time image reconstruction from the data. The best combination of materials found is pharmaceutical beads in silicon oil. Their relaxation times T{sub 1} are sufficiently different to permit imaging the two components separately. The pipe flow experiment used 3 mm, neutrally buoyant, plastic particles, up to 40% by volume, in 80--90W transmission oil flowing in a 5 cm diameter pipe. Distances ranging from 60 cm to 6 m downstream from a commercial mixer was studied. The flow is fully developed at 6 m and the concentration and velocity profiles agree with earlier lower resolution experiments. The eddy current compensation scheme works well for two channels and is being extended to eight channels. The authors have also built a rapid reconstruction hardware that processes and displays images in a fraction of a second. They studied the flow of neutrally buoyant concentrated suspension past a step expansion and contraction in a cylindrical pipe. Interesting transition is observed at the expansion whereby the high fluids-fraction outer layer spreads to become the outer layer in the larger pipe.