Study on suspension rheology - Modeling and industrial application

Abstract

A thixotropy model was developed for the suspensions which have particle size distribution both for the case of spherical and non-spherical particles. The number of primary particles contained in a cluster was selected as the thixotropy parameter. This model is applicable for highly loaded agglomerative slurries. The inter-particle bonding energy is the key parameter, which can be determined by the apparent viscosity measurement of slurry. As the industrial application, this suspension model was applied for latex coagulation process to predict the cluster size of latex. Also, the spin coating process of PMMA particle suspension was investigated to control the optical characteristics of coated film. The validity of the proposed suspension model was confirmed by comparing the model predictions with the experimental data obtained for several industrial application processes. © 2010 The Society of Rheology, Japan.