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RHEOLOGY
Dr: Refaat Ahmed El-Adly
Rheology, defined as the science of deformation and flow, is now recognized as an important field of scientific study. A knowledge of the subject is essential for scientists employed in many industries, including those involving plastics, paints, printing inks, detergents, oils, etc. Rheology is also a respectable scientific discipline in its own right and may be studied by academics for their own esoteric reasons, with no major industrial motivation or input whatsoever.

Mahmoud Nasr Abo-Zaid Suez Canal Uni.

What is rheology?

The term Rheology was invented by Professor Bingham of Lafayette College on the advice of a colleague, the Professor of Classics. It means the study of the deformation and flow of matter. This definition was accepted when the American Society of Rheology was foundedin1929.Thatfirst meeting heard papers on the properties and behaviour of such widely differing materials as asphalt, Lubricants, paints, plastics and rubber, which gives some idea of the scope of the subject and also the numerous scientific disciplines which are likely to be involved. Nowadays, the scope is even wider. Significant advances have been made in biorheology, in polymer rheology and in suspension rheology. There has also been a significant appreciation of the importance of rheology in the chemical processing industries. Opportunities no doubt exist for more extensive applications of rheology In the biotechnological industries.
Historical perspective:

In1678, Robert Hooke developed his "True Theory of Elasticity". He proposed that "the power of any spring is in the same proportion with the tension thereof", if you double the tension you double the extension. This forms the basic premise behind the theory of classical(infinitesimal-strain)elasticity. At the other end of the spectrum, Isaac Newton gave attention to liquid sand in the "Principia" publishedin1687thereappears the following hypothesis associated with the steady simple shearing flow shown in Fig.: "The resistance which arises from the lack of slipperiness of the parts of the liquid, other things being equal, is proportional to the velocity with which the parts of the liquid are separated from one another". This lack of slipperiness is what we now call 'viscosity'. It is synonymous with "internal friction" and is a measure of "resistance to flow". The force per unit area required to produce the motion is F/A and is denoted

by a and is proportional to the 'velocity gradient' (or' shear rate') U/d double the force you double the velocity gradient. The constant of proportionality is called the coefficient of viscosity,

Now although Newton introduced his ideas in 1687, it was not until the nineteenth century that Navier and Stokes independently developed a consistent three-dimensional theory for what is now called a Newtonian viscous liquid. The governing equations for such a fluid are called the Navier-Stokes equations. In the case of a Newtonian liquid, the flow persists as long as the stress is applied. In contrast, for a Hookean solid, a shear stress a applied to the surface y =d results in an instantaneous deformation as shown in Fig. . Once the deformed state is reached there is no further movement, but the deformed state persists as long as the stress is applied. The angle is called the 'strain' and the relevant 'constitutive equation' is

Where G is referred to as the 'rigidity modulus'.

Three hundred years ago everything may have appeared deceptively simple to Hooke and Newton, and indeed for two centuries everyone was satisfied with Hooke's Law for solids and Newton's Law for liquids. In the case of liquids, Newton's law was known to work well for some common liquids and people probably assumed that it was a universal

law like his more famous laws about gravitation and motion. It was in the nineteenth century that scientists began to have doubts.In1835; Wilhelm Weber carried out experiments on silk threads and found out that they were not perfectly elastic. "A longitudinal load", he wrote, "produced an immediate extension. This was followed by a further lengthening with time. On removal of the load an immediate contraction took place, followed by a gradual further decrease in length until the original length was reached ". Here we have a solid-like material, whose behaviour cannot be described by Hooke's law alone. There are elements of flow in the described deformation pattern, which are clearly associated more with a liquid-like response. We shall later introduce the term viscoelasticity to describe such behaviour. So far as fluid-like materials are concerned, an influential contribution came in 1867 from a paper entitled "On the dynamical theory of gases" which appeared in the "Encyclopaedia Britannica the author was James Clerk Maxwell. The paper proposed a mathematical model for a fluid possessing some elastic properties. The definition of rheology already given would allow a study of the behaviour of all matter, including the classical extremes of Hookean elastic solids and Newtonian viscous liquids. However, these classical extremes are invariably viewed as being outside the scope of rheology. So, for example, Newtonian fluid mechanics based on the Navier-Stokes equations is not regarded as a branch of rheology and neither is classical elasticity theory. The over-riding concern is therefore with materials between these classical extremes, like Weber's silk threads and Maxwell's elastic fluids. Returning to the historical perspective, we remark that the early decades of the twentieth century saw only the occasional study of rheological interest and, in general terms, one has to wait until the second World War to see rheology emerging as a force to be reckoned with. Materials used in flame throwers were found to be viscoelastic and this fact generated its fair share of original research during the War. Since that time, interest in the subject has mushroomed, with the emergence of the synthetic-fibre and plastics-processing industries, to

say nothing of the appearance of liquid detergents, multigrade oils, nondrip paints and contact adhesives. There have been important developments in the pharmaceutical and food industries and modem medical research involves an important component of biorheology. The manufacture of materials by the biotechnological route requires a good understanding of the rheology involved. All these developments and materials help to illustrate the substantial relevance of rheology to life in the second half of the twentieth century.
The importance of non-linearity:

So far we have considered elastic behaviour and viscous behaviour in terms of the laws of Hooke and Newton. These are linear laws, which assume direct proportionality between stress and strain, or strain rate, whatever the stress. Further, by implication, the viscoelastic behaviour so far considered is also linear. Within this linear framework, a wide range of rheological behaviour can be accommodated. However, this framework is very restrictive. The range of stress over which materials behave linearly is invariably limited, and the limit can be quite low. In other words, material properties such as rigidity modulus and viscosity can change with the applied stress, and the stress need not be high. The change can occur either instantaneously or over a long period of time, and it can appear as either an increase or a decrease of the material parameter. A common example of non-linearity is known as 'shear-thinning'. This is a reduction of the viscosity with increasing shear rate in steady flow. The toothpaste which sits apparently unmoving on the bristles of the toothbrush is easily squeezed from the tooth paste tub a familiar example of shear-thinning. The viscosity changes occur almost instantaneously in toothpaste. For an example of shear-thinning which does not occur instantaneously we look to non-drip paint. To the observer equipped with no more than a paintbrush the slow recovery of viscosity is particularly noticeable. The special term for time-dependent shear-thinning followed by recovery is 'thixotropy', and non-drip paint can be described astropic. Shear-thinning is just one manifestation of non-linear behaviour, many others could be cited.