UConn Chemical Engineering - Prof. Montgomery T. Shaw . The flow properties, or rheology, of polymer solids and melts are important to the understanding of polymer fabrication processes and the properties of the final polymeric product.
Rheology also provides insight into the structure of the material.
Rheological properties are measured by rotational, capillary and extensional rheometers, along with other specialized instruments. Current projects include studies of electro-rheological fluids, extraction of molecular weight distributions from viscoelastic material functions, and investigation of the curing of composites. We are also studying the rheology behind the processing problem known as shark skin melt fracture. Although many theories of polymer solutions have been developed and tested for dilute solutions and can be applied to concentrated solutions, many problems remain, especially for solutions of stiff polymers and their hydrodynamic properties. For solutions in which phase separation occurs, theoretical description becomes extremely difficult.