Formation and Characterization of Co-Continuous Shear Thickening Fluid/Polymer Blends
By synergistically combining distinct physical and chemical properties of different components, co-continuous polymer blending has become an important route to improve the performance of polymeric materials. Shear thickening fluid is a type of non-Newtonian fluid which has unique shear rate dependence and good damping properties. In this work, the authors combined the shear thickening fluid and a commodity polymer into a single system by forming a co-continuous blend via a melt processing technique. The processing window of such co-continuous blend was determined by referring to the thermal and rheological properties of raw materials and experimentally exploring various blending conditions. An increase of tanδ under dynamic mechanical analyzing testing was observed in the co-continuous blend compared with neat polymer as control, which indicated the enhancement of damping capabilities.