Research Projects

The proposal aims to study the non-linear rheology of time-dependent and viscoelastic materials by examining their response to an oscillatory flow field. The response evolves from mono-harmonic to general periodic, and is intrinsic in nature. The idea is to relate these response functions (nth order complex modulus and complex compliance) to the microstructure of viscoelastic and time-dependent materials. The proposal proposes various experimental and theoretical problems to correlating nth order intrinsic nonlinearity and the microstructure, as well as an experimental study using in-situ rheo-light scattering and rheo-optics.