Fully developed and transient concentration profiles of particulate suspensions sheared in a cylindrical Couette

We experimentally investigate particle migration in a non-Brownian suspension sheared in a Taylor-Couette configuration and in the limit of vanishing Reynolds number. Highly resolved index-matching techniques are used to measure the local particulate volume fraction. In this wide-gap Taylor-Couette configuration, we find that for a large range of bulk volume fraction, ϕ_b ∈ [20% - 50%], the fully developed concentration profiles are well predicted by the suspension balance model of Nott & Brady (J. Fluid Mech., vol. 275, 1994, pp. 157-199). Moreover, we provide systematic measurements of the migration strain scale and of the migration amplitude which highlight the limits of the suspension balance model predictions.