An extension of Reiner's “Deborah Number” concept to a Wide field of rheological investigations

Summary Reiner defined a numeric, which he called theDeborah Number to represent the ratio of a relaxation time to a natural (observation) time. This implies aMaxwell model but is readily extended to complete relaxation spectra. Similar Numbers are proposed for retardation times and also for some conditions of coagulation thixotropy and for data from certain psychophysical experiments.