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Complex Fluids in Biological Systems pp 207–241Cite as

Experimental Challenges of Shear Rheology: How to Avoid Bad Data

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Part of the book series: Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering ((BIOMEDICAL))

Abstract

A variety of measurement artifacts can be blamed for misinterpretations of shear thinning, shear thickening, and viscoelastic responses, when the material does not actually have these properties. The softness and activity of biological materials will often magnify the challenges of experimental rheological measurements. The theoretical definitions of rheological material functions are based on stress, strain, and strain-rate components in simple deformation fields. In reality, one typically measures loads and displacements at the boundaries of a sample, and the calculation of true stress and strain may be encumbered by instrument resolution, instrument inertia, sample inertia, boundary effects, and volumetric effects. Here we discuss these common challenges in measuring shear material functions in the context of soft, water-based, and even living biological complex fluids. We discuss techniques for identifying and minimizing experimental errors and for pushing the experimental limits of rotational shear rheometers. Two extreme case studies are used: an ultrasoft aqueous polymer/fiber network (hagfish defense gel) and an actively swimming suspension of microalgae (Dunaliella primolecta).

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Acknowledgements

This work was supported by the National Science Foundation under Grant No. CBET-1342408. RHE and LMC acknowledge helpful discussions regarding careful rheological measurements with Prof. Christopher Macosko and Dr. David Giles at the University of Minnesota. RHE also thanks Prof. Gareth McKinley at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology for initial discussions on drawing experimental boundaries for rheological measurements. RHE and LMC also acknowledge Prof. Jian Sheng at Texas Tech University (formerly University of Minnesota) for suggesting the study of actively swimming microalgae suspensions, and Mr. Anwar Chengala for preparing those samples.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Science and Engineering, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, Urbana, IL, 61801, USA

    Randy H. Ewoldt & Michael T. Johnston

  2. Department of Materials Science and Engineering, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge, MA, 02139, USA

    Lucas M. Caretta

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  1. Randy H. Ewoldt
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  2. Michael T. Johnston
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  3. Lucas M. Caretta
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Correspondence to Randy H. Ewoldt .

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  1. Department of Mathematics, University of Wisconsin–Madison, Madison, Wisconsin, USA

    Saverio E. Spagnolie

Appendix: Material Details: Hagfish Gel and Microalgae Suspension

Appendix: Material Details: Hagfish Gel and Microalgae Suspension

Hagfish gel serves as an example of an ultrasoft biomaterial gel. It is prepared as in [5, 14] and used in Figs. 6.5, 6.6, and 6.7. The actively swimming microalgae suspension provides an example of a low-viscosity biological solution and is used in Figs. 6.3 and 6.16. The algal species Dunaliella primolecta was used. It is a motile, biflagellated, cell-wall-less, unicellular green algae that does not clump. It has slight negative buoyancy, approximate characteristic diameter 11 μm, and natural concentration on the order of 3 ⋅ 106 cells/mL. Dunaliella Primolecta (UTEX LB 1000) was obtained from UTEX, The Culture Collection of Algae at the University of Texas at Austin. Nonmotile samples were prepared by adding 2 mL of 4 %wt/vol of formaldehyde in phosphate buffered saline (PBS) solution to 25 mL of the bulk sample. The fixed sample was analyzed under light microscope to ensure it was nonmotile.

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Ewoldt, R.H., Johnston, M.T., Caretta, L.M. (2015). Experimental Challenges of Shear Rheology: How to Avoid Bad Data. In: Spagnolie, S. (eds) Complex Fluids in Biological Systems. Biological and Medical Physics, Biomedical Engineering. Springer, New York, NY. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-1-4939-2065-5_6

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