Shear-thickening rheological response of PCC/PEG suspensions

The steady and dynamic rheological behaviors of precipitated calcium carbonate (PCC) suspension in polyethylene glycol (PEG) were investigated on a TA AR2000ex rheometer. Under steady shear consistency index K and flow exponent N of suspensions with different volume fractions were determined. The shear-thinning and the discontinuous shear-thickening behavior were observed at different constant frequencies from 10 to 100 rad/s. The relationship between the complex viscosity and the constant frequency were determined. As the volume fraction increases,flow exponent N shows a rapid increase,and it increases dramatically when the discontinuous shear-thickening takes place,while consistency index K decreases. Dynamic oscillatory shear experiments were conducted at constant strain amplitude and constant frequency,respectively. For the frequency sweep,the system shows viscous property in entire range of the frequency investigated,and the complex viscosity shows discontinuous jump at a critical frequency of 10 rad/s. For the strain sweep,on the other hand,at low strain the elastic modulus is strongly dependent on the strain,and the viscous modulus is independent of the strain. But at the critical strain point both of the moduli show an abrupt jump and the system transits from elastic to viscous at a strain of 0.1.

Non-linear Viscoelastic Rheological Properties of PCC/PEG Suspensions

The shear thinning and shear thickening rheological properties of PCC/PEG suspension were investigated with the increase of oscillatory amplitude stress at different constant frequencies. The results show that the complex viscosity was initially independent of stress amplitude and obvious shear thinning occurred, then dramatic shear thickening took place after reaching the minimum viscosity. Typically, in a constant frequency of 5 rad/s, the elastic modulus, viscous modulus, and tanδ （δ is the out-of-phase angle） vs. the stress amplitude was investigated. It is found that the elastic modulus initially appeared to be independent of stress amplitude and then exhibited a rapid decrease, but the viscous modulus was independent of amplitude stress at lower amplitude stress. After reaching the minimum value the viscous modulus showed a rapid increase. On the other hand, tanδ increased from 0.6 to 92, which indicates that the transition from elastic to viscous had taken place and tanδ showed a steep increase when shear thickening occurred. Lissajous plots are shown for the dissipated energy vs. different maximum stress amplitude in the shear thinning and shear thickening regions. The relationship of dissipated energy vs. maximum stress amplitude was determined, which follows a power law. In the shear thinning region the exponent was 1.91, but it steeply increases to 3.97 in the shear thickening region.