Polymers, foods, cosmetics, paints, Pharmaceuticals—these are just a few of the many industries in which rheoloev research finds application. Rheology addresses the relationship between the stress on materials and the resulting deformation, and is therefore a part of continuum mechanics. Two laws dating back to the 17th century are very important in rheology. Hooke's law describes the behavior of an elastic solid, relating the stress to the deformation via a constant elastic modulus. And Newton's law describes the behavior of a linear viscous fluid, relating the shear stress to the rate of deformation via a constant viscosity coefficient. The aim of rheology today is to describe the more complex behavior of most real materials when they are examined over a wide range of stresses and deformations.
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June 1998
June 01 1998
Polymer Rheology
Neither purely viscous nor perfectly elastic, polymeric fluids have a fading memory of their undeformed shape and display spectacular phenomena not seen in Newtonian fluids.
Physics Today 51 (6), 24–29 (1998);