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A Comprehensive Study Of The Extensional Rheology Of Complex Fluids, Manojkumar Chellamuthu

Doctoral Dissertations 1896 - February 2014

Non-Newtonian fluids play an important role in our daily life. The visco-elastic nature of these fluids comprises a class of materials found in variety of items ranging from food, to plastic products, to the cosmetic products. The design and tunability of non-Newtonian fluids is only possible through an understanding of their complex dynamics and rheology. In this thesis, a filament stretching rheometer is used to investigate the extensional rheology of three important classes of complex visco-elastic fluids namely surfactants, suspensions and polymers.

Surfactants with their unique molecular amphiphilic chemistry allow them to form long wormlike micellar structures, which behave like …