Laminar flow characterization using low-field magnetic resonance techniques

Abstract: Laminar flow velocity profiles depend heavily on fluid rheology. Developing methods of laminar flow characterization, based on low-field magnetic resonance (MR), contributes to the widespread industrial application of the MR technique in rheology. In this paper, we designed a low-cost, palm-sized permanent magnet with a 1H resonance frequency of 20.48 MHz to measure laminar flow. The magnet consists of two disk magnets, which were each tilted at an angle of 1{\deg} from a starting separation of 1.4 cm to generate a constant gradient, 65 gauss/cm, in the direction of flow. Subsequently, a series of process methods, for MR measurements, were proposed to characterize Newtonian and non-Newtonian fluid flows in a pipe, including phase-based method, magnitude-based method, and velocity spectrum method. The accuracies of the proposed methods were validated by simulations, and experiments of Poiseuille flow and shear-thinning flow on the designed magnet. The new velocity profile methods proposed are advantageous because the MR instrumentation and measurement methods are simple and portable. The sophistication is found in the analysis although the physical principles are straight forward.