Shear-induced resuspension in a couette device

Abstract The viscous resuspension of an initially settled bed of particles resulting from the application of a laminar shear flow was studied experimentally in a narrow-gap Couette device. The measured height of the resuspended layer was found to be in excellent agreement with that predicted theoretically using a model developed by Leighton & Acrivos, in which the downward gravitational particle flux is balanced by a corresponding upward flux due to shear-induced particle diffusion.