High shear rheology of shear banding fluids in microchannels

Abstract

We characterize heterogeneous flows of a wormlike micelles solution in microchannels. Combining a pressure resistant microfabrication technology and a performant particle image velocimetry setup, we succeed in determining the nonlinear rheology of this fluid over 4 decades in shear rate and in particular more than 1 decade beyond the end of the stress plateau. We performed an independent measurement of the slip length with 1 μm resolution.