Shear-induced orientation and yielding of Cellulose nanocrystal suspensions: A Rheo-PLI study

Abstract

This thesis presents an investigation of the shear-induced orientation and yielding behavior of CNC water suspensions by employing a Rheo-PLI technique. Cellulose is a structural protein found in plants and algae and plants produce them through synthesis.CNC has demonstrated potential in numerous applications due to its properties such as high mechanical strength, higher crystallinity, high aspect ratio, and optical properties. They are usually using in automotive industries,pharmaceutical industry, reinforcements in fillers and much more.The orientation and its microstructure highly impact to optical and mechanical properties. This study includes the preparation of CNC suspensions and analyze their rheological properties from rheological tests combined with polarized light imaging. In this study we combined the rheological tests with the polarized light imaging technique inorder to examine the yielding and shear-induced orientation of CNC structures in their suspension. We have performed hysteresis loop tests to investigate the thixotropic behavior, oscillatory tests to analyze the viscoelastic behavior, creep tests to examine the stability of CNC suspensions, and Yield stress to determine yielding behavior