RHEOLOGY

Faculty: Morrison, Keith, King

Rheology is the study of deformation and flow.  For simple fluids such as water and oil, flow is relatively simple:  higher rates produce higher stresses, and the mathematics of this relationship has long been established.  For more complex fluids, including plastics, most foods, mixtures such as pastes and suspensions, and biological fluids, the relationship between deformation and flow is much more complex.  The study of these relationships is rheology.
The department has a program in rheology, led by Morrison, and the department houses two rheometers used by researchers from various departments. Projects in chemical engineering involve the shear-flow properties of highly filled carbon-thermoplastic composites to be used in producing bipolar plates for fuel cells.  In biomedical engineering our instruments are used to evaluate the properties of gels.  In mechanical engineering, chemical engineering, and in mathematics researchers work on simulations of complex flows.
There are two courses in the chemical engineering department that are designed to introduce rheology to students:  CM4650 Polymer Rheology and CM4655 Polymer Rheology Laboratory, both taught by Morrison using her text Understanding Rheology (Oxford University Press, 2001, ISBN-10: 0195141660).

Selected Equipment

• Geottfert 1000 capillary rheometer
• Bohlin C-VOR rheometer (Malvern Instruments)
• Instron 3211 capillary rheometer

Selected Theses/Dissertations

• Shear Effects on a Polystyrene-Polybutadiene Diblock, PhD dissertation, K. Barnes, 1997.
• Changes in Long Range Order of a Lamellar Triblock Copolymer Induced by Shear and Annealing, MS thesis, S. Satoor, 1996.
• Test of the Constitutive Hypothesis of Melt Fracture: High Amplitude Step-Shear of Polyisoprene, MS thesis, P. Manjeshwar, 1996.
• Electrorheological Fluids for Vibration Damping, MS thesis, P. Karmarkar, 1993.