Finite stopping time problems and rheometry of Bingham fluids

It is shown that steady channel, simple shear and Couette flows of a Bingham fluid come to rest in a finite amount of time, if either the applied pressure falls below a critical value, or the moving boundaries are brought to rest. An explicit formula for a bound on the finite stopping time in each case is derived. This bound depends on the density, the viscosity, the yield stress, a new geometric constant, and the least eigenvalue of the second order linear differential operator for the interval under consideration. (C) 2002 Elsevier Science B.V. All rights reserved.