The Rheology, Processing and Microstructure of Complex Fluids

This paper describes the development of two pieces of equipment that enable precision rheological, processing and microstructure studies to be carried out on rheologically and structurally complex fluids. Using the experimental equipment detailed, we also report microstructure observations on a variety of structured materials which show shear rate dependent aggregation or alignment effects. A droplet chaining effect, in which alignment of the disperse phase of certain droplet dispersions in viscoelastic fluids was also seen.