L Isa, R Besseling, and W CK Poon (2007)
Shear zones and wall slip in the capillary flow of concentrated colloidal suspensions
Phys. Review Letters 98:703–706.
We image the flow of a nearly random close packed, hard-
sphere colloidal suspension (a "paste") in a square capillary
using confocal microscopy. The flow consists of a "plug" in
the center while shear occurs localized adjacent to the
channel walls, reminiscent of yield-stress fluid behavior.
However, the observed scaling of the velocity profiles with
the flow rate strongly contrasts yield-stress fluid
predictions. Instead, the velocity profiles can be captured
by a theory of stress fluctuations originally developed for
chute flow of dry granular media. We verified this both for
smooth and rough walls.