Shearing rheological behavior of poly(vinyl alcohol) aqueous solutions

This paper described the rheological properties of a number of aqueous solutions of polyvinyl alcohol (PVA) as a function of the concentration and molecular weight. The effect of shear rate and temperature on the apparent viscosity, non-Newtonian exponent and flow activation energy of the PVA solutions was discussed. The experiment results indicate that the differences in viscosity between PVA solutions decreases, and shear thinning behavior can be observed. The value of n shows an increase with initial increase of concentration and then a decrease with further increase of concentration. It is also worth mentioning that the temperature sensitivity of viscosity for the PVA solutions is affected by the shear rate. With increasing shear rate, the activation energy of the PVA solutions is variational.