A MATLAB-Based Software for Estimating Measurement Uncertainties in Capillary Viscometry

The Mooney wall slip correction procedure is sometimes mandatory in the rheological characterization via capillary viscometry of certain complex fluids that have the tendency of slipping at solid walls. Besides making the measurement more complex, the Mooney procedure may give rise to measurement error amplification due to an imprecise knowledge of the capillary radius, even if the uncertainty is of the order of 0.01 mm. This error amplification may be so large that the result becomes grossly inaccurate, and in the worst case the procedure may even not produce a physically acceptable result. In this work a MATLAB-based software that can help researchers determine the maximum allowable inaccuracy on the capillary diameter that can yield feasible data for fluids characterization is devised. For best results, though, the user should know in advance the constitutive characteristics of the unknown fluid in an approximate sense.