(556a) Particle Suspensions in Elastic Fluids: From Synovial Fluid Therapy to a “Swimming Rheometer"

Rigid or flexible particles suspended in viscoelastic fluids are ubiquitous in the food industry (e.g. pastes), industrial molding applications (all composites and 3-D printed parts), the energy industry (e.g. fracking fluids), and biological fluids (i.e. swimming of bacteria in mucous). Bill Schowalter was a pioneer in examining these suspensions particularly examining porous media flows and drop flows in elastic liquids in the 70’s and 80’s. The mathematical description of these suspensions is remarkably still in its infancy, but a the real breakthrough in this area has been the development of 3D computational simulations of such viscoelastic suspensions including particle motion and particle level resolution of the elastic flow fields. These simulations will allow the principles which govern the simplest flows of such suspensions, which are now generally not understood, to become elucidated in the next decade. I will describe two problems that have been recently analyzed using these computational methods – including the shear thickening of such suspensions in model synovial fluids and the design of a mechanical swimmer that is sensitive to elastic fluid rheology.