RHEOLOGY AND SCALING BEHAVIOR OF SWELLING CLAY DISPERSIONS

The microstructure and scaling of rheological properties of colloidal gels of bentonite investigated as a function of volume fraction and strength of interparticle interaction over a range of volume fractions, elastic modulus is well described with a scaling law functions of volume fractions, while the role of interparticle attractions can be accounted for by expressing these rheological properties as (/g-1)n, where g captures the strength of particle interaction and n the microstructure. The scaling variable (p/pc-1), suggested in percolation theory to describe rheological behavior near percolation transition, acts to collapse G’ data suggesting that along lines of constant (/g-1) these gels are rheologically identical.