Pure elongation flow of an electrorheological fluid: insights on wall slip from electrorheology

In this work we study the pure elongation flow behavior of an electrorheological (ER) fluid as a model soft-jammed system, wherein the extent of jamming is controlled by an externally applied electric-field. More specifically, a pure elongation flow has been achieved by facilitating significant slip at the contact between the material and rheometer-plate while pulling it with constant pulling velocity under a constant external electric-field. The normal force exerted by the top plate on the material was measured as a function of gap during the flow for various combinations of electric-field strength and pulling velocity. For any force-gap curve, at first force increases to the maximum (region-I), then it decreases with gap (region-II). In region-II, the normal force-gap curve shifts to higher gaps with increasing electric-field strength for any given pulling velocity. Interestingly, these curves (region-II) demonstrate gap-electric field-velocity superposition, manifesting the self-similar nature of the flow. Finally, we have modeled the flow curves using a slip-layer model, which rendered a remarkable prediction of flow curves and also led to estimation of slip-layer thickness. We observed that slip-layer thickness decreases with increasing magnitude of electric field for a given pulling velocity, which suggests that the extent of jamming plays a crucial role in slip dynamics.