Shear Banding

When a material is sheared in a rheometer, there is no guarantee that the material obeys the expectation that it will shear uniformly. One possible non-uniformity is called shear banding, usually seen when there are two states of the material that can exist at the same shear stress. Examples of materials that exhibit shear banding are the stress plateau of entangled wormlike micelles and perhaps also entangled polymer melts, although the latter is controversial and may only exhibit transient shear banding. The Journal of Rheology had a special issue devoted to shear banding in 2016, which is included in this collection along with relevant papers published in the journal before and since.