Effect of Alumina Addition on the Rheological Behavior of Shear Thickening Fluids
Shear thickening fluids (STF) have attracted much attention in many applications including body armor. In this study, suspensions of silica colloidal particles and polyethylene glycol fluid were prepared at varying volume fractions φ = 0.3 to 0.52 and their rheological behavior was investigated. It was found that the suspensions exhibited a Newtonian behavior for φ < 0.4, whilst a shear thinning followed by a thickening behavior could clearly be observed for φ > 0.4. Furthermore, the critical shear rates for the onset of shear thickening was found to decrease with increasing silica volume fraction but the corresponding critical shear stresses were independent of the volume fraction. To improve the ballistic protective performance, small amount of hard material particles, such as alumina, were added into the silica suspension of φ = 0.5. It was shown that the critical shear rates of the reinforced-STFs decreased with increasing volume fraction and decreasing alumina particle size. However, higher thickening ratio was observed for the alumina additive with agglomerated structure and this ratio increased with increasing alumina volume fraction.