The effect of pre-shear on the extensional rheology of wormlike micelle solutions

The effect of initial microstructural deformation, alignment, and morphology on the response of wormlike micelle solutions in transient uniaxial extensional flows is investigated using a pre-shear device attached to a filament stretching rheometer. In filament stretching experiments, increasing the strength and the duration of the pre-shear just before stretch is found to delay the onset of strain hardening. In these experiments, the wormlike micelle solution filaments fail through a rupture near the axial midplane. The value of the elastic tensile stress at rupture is found to decrease with increasing pre-shear rate and duration. The most dramatic effects are observed at shear rates for which shear banding has been independently observed. The reduction in the strain hardening suggests that pre-shear before filament stretching might break down the wormlike micelles reducing their size before stretch. Strain hardening is also observed in capillary breakup rheometry experiments; however, the pre-sheared wormlike micelle solutions strain harden faster, achieve larger steady-state extensional viscosities and an increase in the extensional relaxation time with increasing shear rate and duration. The difference between the response of the wormlike micelles in filament stretching and capillary breakup experiments demonstrates the sensitivity of these self-assembling micelle networks to pre-conditioning.     

Rheological characterization of commercial highly viscous alginate solutions in shear and extensional flows

The rheological properties of sodium alginate in salt-free solutions were studied by steady shear, dynamic oscillatory and extensional measurements. This biopolymer consists of mannuronic and guluronic acid residues that give a polyelectrolyte character. We applied the scaling theories and checked their accordance with polyelectrolyte behaviour for low concentrations with a shift to neutral polymer behaviour at larger concentrations. This nature was supported by the effect of the concentration on the specific viscosity, the relaxation times from steady shear and the longest relaxation times from small amplitude oscillatory shear (SAOS) measurements. To analyze the extensional behaviour of the samples, we conducted a study of dimensionless numbers and time scales where filament thinning driven by viscous, capillary or elastic forces is at play. We conclude that an exponential filament thinning followed by breakup results in the best regimes that describe the experimental data. Besides, the data pointed out that alginate in salt-free concentrated solutions shows strain thinning of the extensional viscosity and chain rigidity, behaviours that cannot be inferred from the shear rheometry.     

Numerical simulations of Boger fluids through different contraction configurations for the development of a measuring system for extensional viscosity

This paper reports the flow behaviour of Newtonian and Boger fluids through various axisymmetric contraction configurations by means of numerical predictions. A principal aim has been to evaluate the geometrical design choice of the hyperbolic contraction flow. The FENE-CR model has been used to reflect the behaviour of Boger fluids, with constant shear viscosity, finite (yet large) extensional viscosity and less than quadratic first normal stress difference. Numerical calculations have been performed on six different contraction configurations to evaluate an optimized geometry for measuring extensional viscosity in uniaxial extensional flow. The influence of a sharp or rounded recess-corner on the nozzle has also been investigated. Few commercial measuring systems are currently available for measurement of the extensional rheology of medium-viscosity fluids, such as foods and other biological systems. In this context, a technique based on the hyperbolic contraction flow would be a suitable alternative. The pressure drop, the velocity field, the first normal stress difference and the strain rate across the geometry have each been evaluated for Newtonian and Boger fluids. This numerical study has shown that the hyperbolic configuration is superior to the other geometry choices in achieving a constant extension rate. In this hyperbolic configuration, no vortices are formed, the measuring range is broader and the strain rate is constant throughout the geometric domain, unlike in the alternative configurations tested. The difference between sharp and rounded recess-corner configurations proved to be negligible and a rise in excess pressure drop (epd) for increasing deformation rates has been observed.     

A new look at extensional rheology of low-density polyethylene

The nonlinear rheology of three selected commercial low-density polyethylenes (LDPE) is measured in uniaxial extensional flow. The measurements are performed using three different devices including an extensional viscosity fixture (EVF), a homemade filament stretching rheometer (DTU-FSR) and a commercial filament stretching rheometer (VADER-1000). We show that the measurements from the EVF are limited by a maximum Hencky strain of 4, while the two filament stretching rheometers are able to probe the nonlinear behavior at larger Hencky strain values where the steady state is reached. With the capability of the filament stretching rheometers, we show that LDPEs with quite different linear viscoelastic properties can have very similar steady extensional viscosity. This points to the potential for independently controlling shear and extensional rheology in certain rate ranges.     

Experimental investigations into an isothermal spinning threadline: Extensional rheology of a Separan AP 30 solution in glycerol and water

Summary Experimental observations on a steady isothermally extending filament of a water/glycerol solution of Separan AP 30 are presented. Photographic records were analysed to give filament diameter (and hence filament speed) as a function of distance below the extrusion die (a glass capillary). Measurements of inline tension were also made. When effects of weight, surface tension and air drag were accounted for, the extensional stress at every point along the filament could be calculated. Results for stress versus extension rate are presented for various flow situations.Independent rheogoniometric measurements of simple shear viscosity, first and second normal stress differences, and of a crude relaxation time were also made at comparable rates of deformation.Comparison shows that apparent extensional viscosities are several orders of magnitude larger than corresponding simple shear viscosities. After discussion, no conclusion can be drawn about what constitutive equation is most suitable to describe the results.An analysis to predict air drag is given.With 18 figures     

On the stability of the simple shear flow of a Johnson–Segalman fluid

We solve the time-dependent simple shear flow of a Johnson–Segalman fluid with added Newtonian viscosity. We focus on the case where the steady-state shear stress/shear rate curve is not monotonic. We show that, in addition to the standard smooth linear solution for the velocity, there exists, in a certain range of the velocity of the moving plate, an uncountable infinity of steady-state solutions in which the velocity is piecewise linear, the shear stress is constant and the other stress components are characterized by jump discontinuities. The stability of the steady-state solutions is investigated numerically. In agreement with linear stability analysis, it is shown that steady-state solutions are unstable only if the slope of a linear velocity segment is in the negative-slope regime of the shear stress/shear rate curve. The time-dependent solutions are always bounded and converge to a stable steady state. The number of the discontinuity points and the final value of the shear stress depend on the initial perturbation. No regimes of self-sustained oscillations have been found.     

The effect of step-stretch parameters on capillary breakup extensional rheology (CaBER) measurements

Extensional rheometry has only recently been developed into a commercially available tool with the introduction of the capillary breakup extensional rheometer (CaBER). CaBER is currently being used to measure the transient extensional viscosity evolution of mid to low-viscosity viscoelastic fluids. The elegance of capillary breakup extensional experiments lies in the simplicity of the procedure. An initial step-stretch is applied to generate a fluid filament. What follows is a self-driven uniaxial extensional flow in which surface tension is balanced by the extensional stresses resulting from the capillary thinning of the liquid bridge. In this paper, we describe the results from a series of experiments in which the step-stretch parameters of final length, and the extension rate of the stretch were varied and their effects on the measured extensional viscosity and extensional relaxation time were recorded. To focus on the parameter effects, well-characterized surfactant wormlike micelle solutions, polymer solutions, and immiscible polymer blends were used to include a range of characteristic relaxation times and morphologies. Our experimental results demonstrate a strong dependence of extensional rheology on step-stretch conditions for both wormlike micelle solutions and immiscible polymer blends. Both the extensional viscosity and extensional relaxation time of the wormlike micelle solutions were found to decrease with increasing extension rate and strain of the step-stretch. For the case of the immiscible polymer blends, fast step-stretches were found to result in droplet deformation and an overshoot in the extensional viscosity which increased with increasing strain rates. Conversely, the polymer solutions tested were found to be insensitive to step-stretch parameters. In addition, numerical simulations were performed using the appropriate constitutive models to assist in both the interpretation of the CaBER results and the optimization of the experimental protocol. From our results, it is clear that any rheological results obtained using the CaBER technique must be properly considered in the context of the stretch parameters and the effects that preconditioning has on viscoelastic fluids.     

On the motion of flexible threads in a stokes shear field

We consider the motion of a flexible threadlike filament suspended in an unbounded Stokes shear flow. As the extension of a well-established slender-body theory, we treat the case of a highly anisotropic drag relation, as reflected by a small ratio ? of transverse to longitudinal filament mobility. This provides one potentially useful model of hindered filament motion in highly concetrated filamentary suspensions. In the limit ? → 0, which corresponds to the kinematics associated with a recent model (of Doi and Edwards) for polymer chains, the filament motion is governed by a non-linear kinematic-wave equation. We show that this equation can be solved in closed form, for inextensible filaments and general time-dependent shear flows. We investigate the permanence and stability of threads having uniform axial mobility, showing that only piecewise straight threads have permanent shape. Also, we investigate the stability of fully-extended treads by means of both finite and infinitesimal stability analyses, and we provide equations for the growth rate of arbitrary intial disturbances. These are applied to simple shear and simple-extensional flows. Finally, we discuss the failure of our model for small but non-zero ?, near points of extreme curvature of “entaglement”, and the possible relevance to the rheology of fibrous composites and suspensions.     

Breakup of extending liquid threads

A theoretical and experimental study is made of the stability and breakup of an extending viscous liquid cylindrical thread suspended in an immiscible viscous liquid undergoing extensional flow.It is shown that disturbances initiated as the thread is formed will in general as time proceeds be damped, then amplified and finally damped again. By considering disturbances being continually given to the system it is thus found that a disturbance which dominates at one moment will be completely different from that at any other. Assuming that breakup occurs when the disturbance amplitude becomes equal to cylinder radius, results are obtained for the time to breakup and for the final drop size resulting from breakup in terms of fluid properties, extension rate and the amplitude of disturbance given to system.These results were confirmed by examining, with the aid of cinematography, the breakup of a liquid thread in hyperbolic flow.     

On the use of flow through a contraction in estimating the extensional viscosity of mobile polymer solutions

We consider the use of pressure measurements in contraction flows in the determination of the extensional viscosity behaviour of polymer solutions. The experimental data are interpreted on the basis of the recent theory of Binding. The resulting extensional viscosities are compared with those obtained from a commercial Spin Line Rheometer.We conclude that contraction flows provide a convenient means of determining the extensional viscosity of shear-thinning polymer solutions. The case is not so clear for constant viscosity Boger fluids.In the course of the experiments, it is shown that excess pressure losses in the contractions can be brought about by two distinct flow mechanisms in the case of Boger fluids. In the axisymmetric case, both vortex enhancement and excess pressure loss are observed, although there is not a strict one-to-one correlation between these phenomena. In the planar case, vortex enhancement is not conspicuously present, although there is still a substantial excess pressure loss at high flow rates. This excess must be associated with the ‘bulb’ flow field which essentially replaces the vortex-enhancement regime of the axisymmetric case.     

Review of the entry flow problem: Experimental and numerical

This paper is concerned with a review of both experimental and numerical studies of axisymmetric and planar entry flows which have been considered as test problems for the numerical simulation of viscoelastic fluids. The test of the method is usually based upon whether the numerical model predicts vortices in the entry corners. However, it is not clear as to whether one should observe vortices for all viscoelastic fluids. Polyacrylamide solutions and Boger fluids exhibit vortices in axisymmetric flow and the size of the vortex does increase with fluid elasticity. However, the vortex is nearly suppressed in planar entry flow. On the other hand, not all polymer melts are found to exhibit vortices in either axisymmetric or planar entry flow. It is our belief that the origin of vortices is not related to the elasticity based on shear flow propertes but to the behavior of the transient extensional viscosity. Certain polymer melts such as low density polyethylene exhibit vortices in both planar and axisymmetric flow along with unbounded stress growth at the start up of extensional flow. It is believed that the constitutive equations used in the numerical simulation must reflect this extensional behavior if vortices are to be predicted. A review of the numerical simulations concerned with entry flow shows that there is considerable doubt about the accuracy of the predictions for most of the studies. Even for those where the numerical solution is thought to be accurate, the magnitude of the stream function associated with the vortices is usually very low. None of the differential models used to date predicts strain hardening extensional viscosity, but those which are thought to predict vortices do rise more rapidly to the steady-state extensional viscosity values with time. It is recommended that the search of test fluids be widened beyond polymer solutions as there may already exist a number of polymer melts which behave similarly to the predictions of existing constitutive equations.     

Nonlinear instability of an annular liquid sheet exposed to gas flow

Nonlinear instability and breakup of an annular liquid sheet has been modeled in this paper. The liquid sheet is considered to move axially and is exposed to co-flowing inner and outer gas streams. Also, the effect of outer gas swirl on sheet breakup has been studied. In the developed model a perturbation expansion method has been used with the initial magnitude of the disturbance as the perturbation parameter. This is a comprehensive model in that other geometries of planar sheet and a coaxial jet can be obtained as limiting cases of very large inner radius and inner radius equal to zero, respectively. In this temporal analysis, the effect of liquid Weber number, initial disturbance amplitude, inner gas-to-liquid velocity ratio, outer gas-to-liquid velocity ratio and outer gas swirl strength on the breakup time is investigated. The model is validated by comparison with earlier analytical studies for the limiting case of a planar sheet as well as with experimental data of sheet breakup length available in literature. It is shown that the linear theory cannot predict breakup of an annular sheet and the developed nonlinear model is necessary to accurately determine the breakup length. In the limiting case of a coaxial jet, results show that gas swirl destabilizes the jet, makes helical modes dominant compared to the axisymmetric mode and decreases jet breakup length. These results contradict earlier linear analyses and agree with experimental observations. For an annular sheet, it is found that gas flow hastens the sheet breakup process and shorter breakup lengths are obtained by increasing the inner and the outer gas velocity. Axially moving inner gas stream is more effective in disintegrating the annular sheet compared to axially moving outer gas stream. When both gas streams are moving axially, the liquid sheet breakup is quicker compared to that with any one gas stream. In the absence of outer gas swirl, the axisymmetric mode is the dominant instability mode. However, when outer gas flow has a swirl component higher helical modes become dominant. With increasing outer gas swirl strength, the maximum disturbance growth rate increases and the most unstable circumferential wave number increases resulting in a highly asymmetric sheet breakup with shorter breakup lengths and thinner ligaments.     

The relevance of entry flow measurements for the estimation of extensional viscosity of polymer melts

The extensional viscosity of some flexible chain polymers and a thermotropic liquid crystalline polymer was measured in uniaxial extensional flow at constant extension rate. Power law functions were found for the dependence of the extensional viscosity at constant accumulated strain on strain rate. The stress growth curves were compared with measurements in axisymmetric entry flow, where both elongation and shear occur. The comparison showed that the values of the extensional viscosity calculated from the measurements in the entry flow correspond to the ones calculated from the viscosity growth measured in uniaxial elongation and averaged over extensional strain equal to what is accumulated on the fluid as it flows from the barrel into the capillary.     

A simple extensional viscometer

An extensional viscometer is described in which the liquid filament leaving a capillary is subjected to a stretching deformation. In order to keep the flow rate through the capillary unaltered upon inception of stretching, the pressure head at the capillary entrance has to be reduced by an amount equal to the extensional viscoelastic stress at the capillary exit. This affords a simple means of measuring small fluid forces such as those that occur in the stretching of dilute polymer solutions. Since stretch rates can be obtained from a knowledge of the mass flow rate and the filament diameter profile, extensional viscosities can be computed. The efficacy of the technique is demonstrated by obtaining the anticipated results for Newtonian liquids.     

Measurement of relaxation times in extensional flow of weakly viscoelastic polymer solutions

The characterization of the extensional rheology of polymeric solutions is important in several applications and industrial processes. Filament stretching and capillary breakup rheometers have been developed to characterize the extensional properties of polymeric solutions, mostly for high-viscosity fluids. However, for low concentration polymer solutions, the measurements are difficult using available devices, in terms of the minimum viscosity and relaxation times that can be measured accurately. In addition, when the slow retraction method is used, solvent evaporation can affect the measurements for volatile solvents. In this work, a new setup was tested for filament breakup experiments using the slow retraction method, high-speed imaging techniques, and an immiscible oil bath to reduce solvent evaporation and facilitate particle tracking in the thinning filament. Extensional relaxation times above around 100 μs were measured with the device for dilute and semi-dilute polymer solutions. Particle tracking velocimetry was also used to measure the velocity in the filament and the corresponding elongation rate, and to compare with the values obtained from the measured exponential decay of the filament diameter.     

Some self-similar viscous gas flows in a channel

We consider the class of self-similar axisymmetric and two-dimensional laminar flows of a viscous gas in a long channel with smooth contour, in which the longitudinal component of the velocity and the gas temperature are functions of a single dimensionless transverse coordinate. Such flows correspond to exponential (axisymmetric flow) or linear (two-dimensional flow) increase of the radius or height of the channel and corresponding exponential or hyperbolic decrease of the static pressure along the channel.     

Fiber spinning of very dilute solutions of polyacrylamide in water

The extensional viscometer developed earlier by the authors was refined and used to extend very dilute (50 ppm) solutions of polyacrylamide in distilled water. A slender liquid filament was stretched by the use of a suction device, and this resulted in the spinning of the fiber. By varying the volumetric flow rate and the filament length, stretch rates in the 100–1000 s⁻¹ range were easily obtained. The corresponding tensile stresses were very large, and these gave apparent extensional viscosities of the order of 200 P (20 Pa s). In contrast to this, the material functions in shear were difficult to measure, except for the shear viscosity which showed pronounced shear thinning. It was found that all the measurements, in shear as well as extension, could be explained based on the four constant Johnson-Segalman constitutive equation.     

Rheology of a dilute suspension of axisymmetric Brownian particles

Explicit results are presented for the complete rheological properties of dilute suspensions of rigid, axisymmetric Brownian particles possessing fore-aft symmetry, when suspended in a Newtonian liquid subjected to a general three-dimensional shearing flow, either steady or unsteady. It is demonstrated that these rheological properties can be expressed in terms of five fundamental material constants (exclusive of the solvent viscosity), which depend only upon the sizes and shapes of the suspended particles. Expressions are presented for these scalar constants for a number of solids of revolution, including spheroids, dumbbells of arbitrary aspect ratio and long slender bodies. These are employed to calculate rheological properties for a variety of different shear flows, including uniaxial and biaxial extensional flows, simple shear flows, and general two-dimensional shear flows. It is demonstrated that the rheological properties appropriate to a general two-dimensional shear flow can be deduced immediately from those for a simple shear flow. This observation greatly extends the utility of much of the prior Couette flow literature, especially the extensive numerical calculations of Scheraga et al. (1951, 1955).The commonality of many disparate results dispersed and diffused in earlier publications is emphasized, and presented from a unified hydrodynamic viewpoint.     

Thermo-rheological behavior of model protein–polysaccharide mixtures

The use of mixtures of pea protein isolate (PPI) and κ-carrageenan (κ-C) is increasing rapidly with the aim of increasing the stability and viscosity of food products. Recent works have studied their textural and thermal properties but few have studied the influence of the temperature and concentration on the rheological behavior of model systems. In the present work, we study the thermo-rheological properties in the linear and non-linear viscoelastic regimes, in both shear and extensional flows, of mixtures of PPI and κ-C with the aim of obtaining a model for the temperature-induced gelation of complex mixtures of globular vegetable proteins under linear and non-linear deformations. We analyzed the influence of temperature and protein-to-polysaccharide ratios and showed that there are strong changes in the mechanical properties. In shear flows, small-amplitude oscillatory shear was used to study the linear regime and large-amplitude oscillatory shear was used for the non-linear regime. In extensional flows, studies were carried out via the analysis of the dynamics of capillary thinning and breakup process in a filament-thinning rheometer.