Journal of Fundamental and Applied Sciences (Dec 2012)
RHEOLOGY AND SCALING BEHAVIOR OF SWELLING CLAY DISPERSIONS
Abstract
The microstructure and scaling of rheological properties of colloidal gels of bentonite investigated as a function of volume fraction and strength of interparticle interaction over a range of volume fractions, elastic modulus is well described with a scaling law functions of volume fractions, while the role of interparticle attractions can be accounted for by expressing these rheological properties as (/g-1)n, where g captures the strength of particle interaction and n the microstructure.The scaling variable (p/pc-1), suggested in percolation theory to describe rheological behavior near percolation transition, acts to collapse G’ data suggesting that along lines of constant (/g-1) these gels are rheologically identical.