The behaviour of cohesive sediments (mud) is studied for various engineering challenges. This is done both numerically and with physical experiments. The conduct of physical experiments involving natural mud currently has two main shortcomings. Firstly, the behaviour of the mud during the experiments is difficult to reproduce. Hence, so are the experiments themselves. This is an issue for the credibility of the experiments and makes it difficult to compare different experiments. To study the flow dynamics in a fluid through physical experiments, measurements of pressure and/or flow velocities at multiple locations are needed. Techniques enabling this in mud only allow point measurements using probes. Multiple probes are needed to obtain an adequate resolution of measurement locations, which is undesirable as they affect the flow in the mud. In experimental fluid dynamics, a whole-flow-field velocimetry technique like PIV is used for this. Conventionally, a PIV setup uses optical light (laser) to visualise the fluid dynamics in the fluid for recording. These recordings are then processed by a cross-correlation PIV algorithm, resulting in velocity vector fields that are the same size as the recorded images.  In the case of mud, its opacity renders the use of optical light useless. Hence, an alternative visualisation technique is needed to enable the application of PIV to mud. This research aims to find means to overcome these two deficiencies of experimental research using natural mud. For reproducibility of the behaviour of the mud, the procedure for conditioning the mud in preparation for the experiments is mainly addressed. It is found that conditioning with a combination of axial and radial mixing yields the most control over the settling behaviour of the mud during the experiments. In turn, this results in improved reproducibility of the experiments. Ultrasound imaging proved to be the most effective technique to record the flow dynamics in mud for later processing with a PIV algorithm. The application of PIV to ultrasound images is a well-known technique in other fields of engineering and is referred to as Ultrasound Image Velocimetry (UIV).