Rheology is the study of flow and deformation of materials. Materials are everywhere: they are foods like mayonnaise and artificial meat. They are toothpaste gels, or concrete walls or glue on a post-it note or protein surfactants in an emulsion. Rheology is therefore a widely used tool relevant for both applied and fundamental research. The versatility of the subject makes that a broad understanding of the underlying concepts is essential to perform experiments and interpret data. This course aims to offer such a broad view.

The course consists of lectures of 2 hours, and a full day mini symposium. Participants will learn how to identify typical material characteristics in rheological data (yield stress, shear thinning, fracture, etc.). The course will touch upon how to combine multiple different rheological techniques/protocols to extend the necessarily limited range of a single protocol (super-position principles, creep/oscillatory test, different size tools). Additionally, the course briefly covers how to combine rheological test information with other data types at simultaneous experiments (caber test, flow field data, birefringence, light scattering: DLS, X-ray, Raman).  

The mini-symposium will feature a keynote lecture from Prof. Peter Fischer. Furthermore, the senior scientists from WUR will give talks on their rheology-related work. Participants can submit an abstract and be invited to give a short presentation on their work, where capacity allows.

For more information visit the VLAG Graduate School website.