Floc dynamics in flowing fibre suspensions

Fibre suspensions are ubiquitous in nature and technology. They occur in flowing form and as extended networks. Flow of fibre suspensions takes place in smaller network portions, fibre floes. Fibre networks normally form when fibre flows stop and vice versa. Traditionally, fibre suspensions are treated as systems of fibres. Here they will be treated as crowded systems of compressible floes. With a large Couette device it is shown that these floes split and fuse, shrink and swell and behave much like a particulate system composed of compressible floes suspended in a liquid, which can move in and out of the floes. The investigated average shear rate range is from zero to about 600 s(-1).