High-Shear Rheology of Shear-Thinning Fluids from Turbulent Pipe Flow Data - Datasets

Predicting the turbulent flow of non-Newtonian, shear-thinning fluids remains challenging in process industries due to the limited availability of rheological data at high shear rates (>3,000 s⁻¹). Conventional methods, such as rotational rheometry or laminar pipe tests, capture only moderate rates (<500 s⁻¹), necessitating extrapolation and introducing significant errors. We propose a practical approach to estimate high-shear rheology directly from turbulent pipe flow measurements, combining them with conventional data and applying validated correlations to fit Herschel–Bulkley and Sisko models. Applied to wastewater sludge (2.6–4.7 wt.%), adding a single turbulent data point reduced friction factor errors from 3.7–18.8% to 1.8–5.9% (Herschel–Bulkley) and from 12.4–22.4% to 2.2–5.1% (Sisko). This method enables accurate, high-shear rheology from routine flow tests, improving design and optimisation of industrial transport systems without specialist techniques.