Rheology

Rheology (or Rheometry) is a large field of science that  is the study of the flow of matter, primarily in the liquid state, but also as ‘soft solids’ or solids under conditions in which they respond with plastic flow rather than deforming elastically in response to an applied force (Wikipedia).

Particular Sciences offers an unusually wide selection of specialist instruments and technologies to characterise materials (maybe not that surprising as this is what we do) and this technology  page groups the products and the disparate instruments together.

This ranges from classic Viscosity to special cases like Dilute Solution Viscosity to Oscillating tests, to Microfluidics up to Capillary Rheology used with quite stiff materials. Then there are dedicated tests like the DSR used for “Asphalt” testing. At the finer end we now find ourselves studying inside the matrix of suspensions with Microrheology, looking at interactions at the submicron level that influence the  bulk properties of products for formulation purposes. We even look at the flow of Powders and work to improve processes with dry matter.