Applied Rheology
Author:
Keywords:
microrheology, thin film rheology, tribology, boundary lubrication, sliding plate rheometer, micro gap, fmr, triborheometry, pdms, complex fluids, polymer-solutions, newtonian fluids, oscillatory flow, molecular-weight, plate rheometer, capillary tubes, soft materials, liquid-drops, shear-flow, Science & Technology, Technology, Mechanics, FMR, PDMS, COMPLEX FLUIDS, NEWTONIAN FLUIDS, OSCILLATORY FLOW, MOLECULAR-WEIGHT, CAPILLARY TUBES, LIQUID-DROPS, SHEAR, POLYMER, VISCOSITY, RHEOLOGY, 0904 Chemical Engineering, 0912 Materials Engineering, 0913 Mechanical Engineering, Polymers, 4012 Fluid mechanics and thermal engineering
Abstract:
An enhanced version of the flexure-based microgap rheometer (FMR) is described which enables rheological measurements in steady state shearing flows of bulk fluid samples of PDMS with an absolute gap separation between the shearing surfaces of loo nm-100 mu m. Alignment of the shearing surfaces to a parallelism better then 10(-7) rad allows us to reliably measure shear stresses at shear rates up to 10(4) s(-1) At low rates and for shearing gaps < 5 mu m the stress response is dominated by sliding friction between the surfaces that is independent of the viscosity of the fluid and only determined by the residual particulate phase (dust particles) in the fluid. This behaviour is similar to the boundary lubrication regime in tribology. The absolute gap control of the FMR allows us to systematically investigate the flow behaviour at low degrees of confinement (gap separations too nm-2 mu m) that cannot be accessed with conventional (controlled normal load) tribological test protocols.