Molecular-level description of temperature and pressure effects on the viscosity of water

Abstract

The steep non-Arrhenius temperature dependence at low temperatures of the shear viscosity of water and its backwards-sounding increased fluidity under pressure for temperatures below 33°C are two of the anomalies of this liquid that have been known for a very long time. The purpose of the present paper is to show how these two important characteristics of water emerge quantitatively from an explicit two-state outer-neighbor mixture model that we have used to explain many other properties of this substance. It will be shown here that both of these viscosity anomalies are directly related to the steep variations with temperature and pressure of the fractional compositions of ice-Ih-type bonding and ice-II-type bonding in the two-state mixture. This compositional dependence has already been obtained in earlier work from the variations of the density and the isothermal compressibility of water with temperature. The viscosity analysis presented here thus helps to unify further all the properties of this liquid under a single, very simple structural characteristic. © 1999 American Institute of Physics.