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Published on: February 6, 2014
Shear waves in viscoelastic wormlike micellar fluids
J R Gladden1, C E Skelton, J Mobley
1Department of Physics and Astronomy and National Center for Physical Acoustics, University of Mississippi, University, Mississippi 38677, USA. jgladden@olemiss.edu
Abstract:
Low frequency (61 Hz) shear wave speeds have been measured in viscoelastic wormlike micellar (WM) fluids for a concentration range of 20/12-160/96 mM CTAB/NaSAL. The strain induced birefringence of the WM fluids was exploited to optically track the shear pulse using crossed polarizing filters and high speed video. It was found that shear speed increases roughly linearly with concentration at a rate of 3.5 mm s(-1) mM(-1) CTAB. Further, comparison with elastic and loss moduli obtained from rheology data show that shear wave propagation is dominated by the elastic modulus for this frequency range.
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