Rheology or the flow of fluids plays an important role in the processing of a number of industries – polymers, consumer products, ceramics, catalysts, biotechnology to name a few. Whether it be manufacture of a new drug, shampoo, fuel cell batteries or 3D printing tissue scaffolds one has to start from a suspension of particles/polymers, flow them through pipes/tubes and process them into useful products.

Different classes of fluids have different flow properties and an understanding of this is critical to developing design rules for further processing. Rheology also plays a critical part in the research:

1. S. Ramakrishnan has a current NSF grant on the structure, dynamics and rheology of mixtures of colloidal particles.
2. The department of defense grant of S. Ramakrishnan deals with structure and rheology of polymer-particle composites with an aim of processing them into light weight aircraft wings.

Thus we would like to introduce rheology at an early stage, motivate students and get them involved in research as they progress in their education.

1. Measure the viscosity, yield stress and rheologically classify commonly available materials – food (fruit juice, peanut butter etc.) and cosmetics (sunscreen etc.). This will help students understand the differences between a Newtonian and Non-Newtonian fluid.
2. Understand the effect of additives (particles) when they are added to a solution – we will try to mimic blood plasma with an artificial system of glycerol and add biodegradable chitosan particles (to mimic cells) at various concentrations.

To simulate commercial products we will add silica nanoparticles at various concentrations to study the effect of particles on resultant rheological properties.