A kinetic theory of suspensions. II. The steady flow of a hard‐sphere suspension

Nonlinear rheology of colloidal dispersions

Colloidal dispersions are commonly encountered in everyday life and represent an important class of complex fluid. Of particular significance for many commercial products and industrial processes is the ability to control and manipulate the macroscopic flow response of a dispersion by tuning the microscopic interactions between the constituents. An important step towards attaining this goal is the development of robust theoretical methods for predicting from first-principles the rheology and nonequilibrium microstructure of well defined model systems subject to external flow. In this review we give an overview of some promising theoretical approaches and the phenomena they seek to describe, focusing, for simplicity, on systems for which the colloidal particles interact via strongly repulsive, spherically symmetric interactions. In presenting the various theories, we will consider first low volume fraction systems, for which a number of exact results may be derived, before moving on to consider the intermediate and high volume fraction states which present both the most interesting physics and the most demanding technical challenges. In the high volume fraction regime particular emphasis will be given to the rheology of dynamically arrested states.

Transport in a highly asymmetric binary fluid mixture

We present molecular dynamics calculations of the thermal conductivity and viscosities of a model colloidal suspension with colloidal particles roughly one order of magnitude larger than the suspending liquid molecules. The results are compared with estimates based on the Enskog transport theory and effective medium theories (EMT) for thermal and viscous transport. We find, in particular, that EMT remains well applicable for predicting both the shear viscosity and thermal conductivity of such suspensions when the colloidal particles have a "typical" mass, i.e., much larger than the liquid molecules. Very light colloidal particles on the other hand yield higher thermal conductivities, in disagreement with EMT. We also discuss the consequences of these results for some proposed mechanisms for thermal conduction in nanocolloidal suspensions.

Temperature dependence of density, thermal expansion coefficient and shear viscosity of supercooled glycerol as a reflection of its structure

The relationship of the microstructure of supercooled, highly viscous glycerol to the temperature dependence of its density, thermal expansion coefficient, and shear viscosity are discussed. The character of this temperature dependence at the transition from low viscosity state to the solid amorphous state (solidified state without nuclei) is described with help of function psi, which can be interpreted as the effective number of degrees of freedom responsible for the change of viscosity of glycerol over a broad range; these degrees of freedom are those related to the alpha-relaxation process. It is shown that the change in effective activation energy of the viscosity is completely determined by the parameter psi. The change in the shear viscosity of glycerol due to the influence of the solid-phase nuclei is considered. It is shown that the introduction of the parameter phi, equal to the specific volume occupied by the nuclei of the solid phase, together with psi provides a natural explanation of the temperature dependence of density and thermal expansion coefficients of glycerol in its liquid, solid amorphous, glassy, and crystal states. The peculiarities of the temperature dependence of phi(T) and psi(T) for glycerol and o-terphenyl are compared.