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Aqueous foams are ubiquitous; they appear in products and processes that span the cosmetics, food, and energy industries. The versatile applicability of foams comes as a result of their intrinsic viscous and elastic properties; for example, foams are exploited as drilling fluids in enhanced oil recovery for their high viscosity. Recently, so-called capillary foams were discovered: a class of foams that have excellent stability under static conditions and whose flow properties have so far remained unexplored. The unique architecture of these foams, containing oil-coated bubbles and a gelled network of oil-bridged particles, is expected to affect foam rheology. In this work, we report the first set of rheological data on capillary foams. We study the viscoelastic properties of capillary foams by conducting oscillatory and steady shear tests. We compare our results on the rheological properties of capillary foams to those reported for other aqueous foams. We find that capillary foams, which have low gas volume fractions, exhibit long lasting rheological stability as well as a yielding behavior that is reminiscent of surfactant foams with high gas volume fractions.
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A reexamination of the Cox–Merz rule through the lens of recovery rheology
Empirical rules play a crucial role in industrial and experimental settings for efficiently determining the rheological properties of materials, thereby saving both time and resources. An example is the Cox–Merz rule, which equates the steady-shear viscosity with the magnitude of the complex viscosity obtained in oscillatory tests. This empirical rule provides access to the steady-shear viscosity that is useful for processing conditions without the instabilities associated with experiments at high shear rates. However, the Cox–Merz rule is empirical and has been shown to work in some cases and fail in others. The underlying connection between the different material functions remains phenomenological and the lack of a comprehensive understanding of the rheological physics allows for ambiguity to persist in the interpretation of material responses. In this work, we revisit the Cox–Merz rule using recovery rheology, which decomposes the strain into recoverable and unrecoverable components. When viewed through the lens of recovery rheology, it is clearly seen that the steady-shear viscosity comes from purely unrecoverable acquisition of strain, while the complex viscosity is defined in terms of contributions from both recoverable and unrecoverable components. With recovery tests in mind, we elucidate why the Cox–Merz rule works only in a limited set of conditions and present an approach that could allow for universal comparisons to be made. This work further highlights the significance of recovery rheology by showing how it is possible to extend beyond phenomenological approaches through clear rheophysical metrics obtained by decomposing the material response into recoverable and unrecoverable components.
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- Award ID(s):
- 1847389
- PAR ID:
- 10508404
- Publisher / Repository:
- AIP Publishing
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Rheology
- Volume:
- 68
- Issue:
- 3
- ISSN:
- 0148-6055
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 381 to 396
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1122/8.0000811
