High-frequency ultrasonic speckle velocimetry in sheared complex fluids

High-frequency ultrasonic pulses at 36 MHz are used to measure velocity profiles in a complex fluid sheared in the Couette geometry. Our technique is based on time-domain cross-correlation of ultrasonic speckle signals backscattered by the moving medium. Post-processing of acoustic data allows us to record a velocity pro. le in 0.02 - 2 s with a spatial resolution of 40 mum over 1 mm. After a careful calibration using a Newtonian suspension, the technique is applied to a sheared lyotropic lamellar phase seeded with polystyrene spheres of diameter 3 - 10 mum. Time-averaged velocity profiles reveal the existence of inhomogeneous flows, with both wall slip and shear bands, in the vicinity of a shear-induced layering transition. Slow transient regimes and/or temporal fluctuations can also be resolved and exhibit complex spatio-temporal flow behaviors with sometimes more than two shear bands.