Collective viscosity model for shear thinning polymeric materials

This work presents a framework for collectively modeling shear viscosities of grouped polymeric materials. The viscosity model has been derived from the multi-modal White-Metzner constitutive equation. Simplification to the multi-modal viscosity has resulted in a viscosity model that controls gradual transition between two conventional viscosity models. It facilitates mathematical representation of multiple sets of viscosity data at the same time. A conventional shear viscosity function, which is common to the group, is multiplied by a material-specific function with one or two constants to form the collective viscosity model. The proposed framework has been applied to several polymeric systems such as polymers with varying molecular weight, polymer solutions with different concentrations, polymers with different filler loadings, and polymer blends with various composition ratios. It has been shown that the K-index in the proposed viscosity model and the variable in the material system such as concentration or compounding ratio can be correlated with each other to predict the viscosities of untested cases.