Rheology is the study of how materials flow and deform under an applied force. If one looks at commonly used “gels”, like e.g. yoghurt and honey, one can easily see, that their viscosity is quite different. But how different though?🤔
A rheometer, such as the one shown here, is a device that applies an oscillatory stress to a material in order to measure properties such as viscosity, stiffness, gelation rate, etc. Today, we are using it to measure the strength of a fibrin gel, fibrin being the protein that forms the structural scaffold of a blood clot at wound sites in vivo. We are looking at two main properties: one the storage modulus G’, which shows how solid-like the behaviour is, and second the loss modulus G’’, which tells how liquid-like the material behaves.
This method has many versatile applications in material science, engineering, geophysics and even human biology as shown here.🤓
Have a nice Thursday
#NCCR #NCCRmse #rheology #viscosity #materialscience #Lab #Science
