Flow instability in CNT/polymer suspensions

An elastic instability is shown as flow-induced clustering in semidilute nanotubes in polymer matrices.  Rheo-optical and shear microscopy measurements show that the transient rheology is correlated with the evolution of highly elastic vorticity-aligned aggregates, with the underlying instability being somewhat ubiquitous in complex fluids.

Lin-Gibson, S., Pathak, J. A., Grulke, E. A., Wang, H. and Hobbie, E. K., Phys. Rev. Lett., 92, 048302 (2004).