Working group “Rheometry”

A major achievement of the working group resulted in a paper dealing with an interlaboratory study of the rheological properties of cement paste and ultrasound gel as reference substance. The main goal was to quantify the comparability and reproducibility of measurements of the Bingham parameters yield stress and plastic viscosity when measured on one specific paste composition and one particular ultrasound gel in different laboratories using various rheometers and measurement geometries. The procedures for both in preparing the cement paste and performing the rheological measurements on cement paste and ultrasound gel were carefully defined for all of the study’s participants. Different conversion schemes for comparing the results obtained with the different measurement setups are presented here and critically discussed. The procedure proposed in this paper ensured a reasonable comparability of the results with a coefficient of variation for the yield stress of 27% and for the plastic viscosity of 24%, despite the individual measurement series’ having been performed in different labs with different rheometers and measurement geometries.