The Origins of Rheology: A Short Histrica!

Excursin

Deepak Doris wanty

DuPont iTechnologies, Experimental Station
Wilmington, DE 19880-0334

I. Prelude to rheology Table 1: Significan! rheological works prior to the formal

inception of rheology in 1929
This article provides a brief historical perspectiva on the
evolution of rheology and the long gesttion period before the FLUIDS/MODELS KEY REPRESENTATIVE WORKS
# CLASS TIME
birth of the subject. It is not intended to be a comprehensivo
state-of-the-art review but rather to capture key events in the 1 a) Perfect, Anti-q Archimedes (-250 BCE),
historical progresson of the discipline, which was far from rigid bodies uity Newton (1687)
monotonic, and the signifcant contributions from a variety of b) Ideal Boyle (1660), Hooke (1678),
elastic solids 1600s Young (1807), Cauchy (1827)
specialists. Considerable liberty has been taken in identifying
c) Inviscid Pascal (1663), Bemoulli (1738),
key players and avoiding repetitive mention of different efforts mater- fluids 1700s
Euler(1755)
by the same workers in order to emphasize the diversity of Newton (1687), Navier (1 823),
influences and individuis who have molded the discipline, and d) Newton- Early Stokes (1845), Hagen (1839),
to satisfy severe space constraints. Some valuable resources for ian liquids 1800s Poiseuille(1841),
the historical aspects of rheology are Bingham (1922), Scott Wedemann(1856)
2 Linear viscoelasticity Mid Weber(1835), Kohlrausch(1863),
Blar (1949), Markowitz (1968), Bird et al. (1987a,b), White 1800s Wiechert (1893), Maxwell (1867),
(1990), and Tanner and Walters (1998), and the reader is Boltzmann(1878), Poynting &
referred to these works for firther details. Thomson (1902)

As per the strict definiton, rheology is concerned with the Late

Schwedpff (1890), Trouton &
description of the flow behavior of all types of matter. By Andrews (1904), Hatchek (1913),
Generalized Newtonian ISOOs-Ea
conyention, however, rheologists' main interests are restricted to 3 Bingham(1922), stwald (1925) -de
(viscous) liquids rly
Waele (1923), Herschel &
industrially relevant materials with properties intermedate 1900s
Bulkley(1926)
between thse of ideal solids and liquids. A useful engineering
Non-linear Early Poynng (1913), Zaremba (1903),
defnitionqf rheology is the description of materials using 4
viscoelasticity 1900s Jaumann (1905), Hencky (1929)
"constitutiv equations" between the stress history and the
a) Suspen-
strain history. Tat>le 1 provides a convenient reference for the Einstein (1906), Jeffiey (1922)
sions
accompanying discussion regarding the period prior to the Schonbein(1847),
Key
formal creation of the discipline of rheology in 1929. material
b)Poly-
Early
Baekeland(1909),
5 Staudinger(1920),
descrip-ti iners 1900s Carothers(1929)
1) Ideal materials ons
c) Saras (1893), Trouton (1906),
Exten-siona Fano (1908), Tamman & Jenckd
a) Rigd solids: The entire subject of general mechanics deals l viscosity (1930)
with ideal "Euclidean" bodies where only the mass (or 6
The gnesis of
1929 Bingham, Reiner and others
density) of the bodies is relevant (Euclidean geometry is based rheology
on rigid bodies which do not undergo deformation). In fact,
Newton's "Principia" was primarily concerned with rigid body had actually come up with a similar rule related to a "spring of
mechanics and bis comment on viscosity was only a corollary air" as far back as 1660. The constant of proportionality was later
of his prescient mind. Solid mechanics is the oldest branch of identified as an intrinsic property of the material - the elastic (or
the physical sciences and it is appropriate to recall the Young's) modulus - by the great English polymath Thomas
apocryphal, if time worn, story of Archimedes (~250 BCE) Young in 1807 (see Markowitz (1968)). Cauchy set up the first
who claimed that he could move the world if he were provided fundamental equations of classical (small deformation) elasticity
therightleverage. in 1827 based largely on the work of investigators like C. L. M.
H. Navier, C. A. Coulomb and S. D. Poisson.
b) Elastic solids: At the other end of the spectrum, where pur
elastic solid-like behavior is concerned, Robert tlooke (Hooke c) Inviscid fluids: A class of ideal materials is the so-called
(1678)) proposed that "the power of any spring is in the same Pascalian (or inviscid) fluids which exhibit no resistance to flow.
proportion with the tensin thereof" (i.e., the stress is Blaise Pascal in 1663 first made the equivalent statement that the
proportional to the strain). It is worth noting that Robert Boyle pressure in a liquid is the same in all directions