Vertical structures in shear thickening fluids
Robert Deegan
University of Michigan, USA
Abstract:
The simplest models of matter posit a linear relationship between the stress and deformation, as for example in Hooke’s law. However, many useful and important fluids (such as, shampoos, industrial slurries, geophysical fluids, polymeric melts) exhibit a nonlinear response to stress. In shear thickening fluids this nonlinear response manifests as an increase of the apparent viscosity with increasing shear rate. I will show that vibrated shear thickening fluids display a unique ability to maintain a vertically oriented free-surface despite the action of gravity.
I will present my experimental results correlating this behavior with the rheological properties of the fluids, and my attempts to model the observed phenomena.