Processing the vane shear flow data from Couette analogy

A new procedure is described to convert the vane torque and rotational velocity data into shear stress vs shear rate relationships. The basis of the procedure consists in considering locally the sheared material as a Bingham fluid and computing a characteristic shear rate from Couette analogy. The approach is first applied to experimental vane data of Newtonian fluid, then used to process vane experimental data of non-Newtonian and yield stress materials. Results, which are favourably compared with torsional flow, show that the approach correctly predicts the rheological behaviour of the materials investigated.