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APS » Journals » Phys. Rev. Lett. » Volume 98 » Issue 22
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Phys. Rev. Lett. 98, 224501 (2007) [4 pages]

Motion of a Viscoelastic Micellar Fluid around a Cylinder: Flow and Fracture

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Joseph R. Gladden* and Andrew Belmonte†
The W. G. Pritchard Laboratories, Department of Mathematics, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA

Received 18 May 2006; revised 28 February 2007; published 29 May 2007

We present an experimental study of the motion of a viscoelastic micellar fluid around a moving cylinder, which ranges from fluidlike flow to solidlike tearing and fracture, depending on the cylinder radius and velocity. The observation of crack propagation driven by the cylinder indicates an extremely low tear strength, approximately equal to the steady state surface tension of the fluid. At the highest speeds a driven crack is observed in front of the cylinder, propagating with a fluctuating speed equal on average to the cylinder speed, here as low as 5% of the elastic wave speed.

© 2007 The American Physical Society

URL:
http://link.aps.org/doi/10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.224501
DOI:
10.1103/PhysRevLett.98.224501
PACS:
47.20.Gv, 46.50.+a, 47.57.−s

*Present address: Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Mississippi, Oxford, MS, USA.

†Also at the School of Engineering and Applied Sciences, Harvard University, Cambridge, MA, USA.

 
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