CSS450

Optical Rheology System

The Linkam Optical Shearing System (CSS450) allows the structural dynamics of complex fluids to be directly observed via a standard optical microscope while they are under precisely controlled temperature and various shear modes. 

Using the optical shearing cell, it is possible to study the microstructure evolution of complex fluids in detail for many physical processes such as the coarsening of binary fluids during their phase separations, flow-induced mixing and demixing of polymer blends, defects dynamics of liquid crystals and the aggregation of red blood cells and their deformation in flows. We are then in a good position to correlate micro structural dynamics with rheological data for gaining insight into rheology of complex fluids.