Rheology of Wormlike Micellar Gels Formed By Long-Chained Zwitterionic Surfactants

Abstract

Long-chained surfactant solutions have found widespread use in the oil and gas industry due to a host of attractive properties. In this paper, we characterize one such commercially used viscoelastic surfactant that forms a wormlike micellar gel at room temperature and a viscoelastic solution at higher temperatures. We probe both states by conducting linear and nonlinear rheological tests and analyze their behaviour under the framework of micellar rheology. Our study outlines departure from behaviour exhibited by more conventional micellar systems and uncovers interesting dynamics like shear-induced fracture and possible shear-banding in these materials. In doing so we provide a detailed understanding of a novel class of wormlike micellar solutions

Corrected micellar length estimates and energetic calculations using formulae in Ref 62. Added explanatory text, Added References, Corrected typos

References in corpus (6)

• Rheology of giant micelles
• Ductile and brittle yielding in thermal and athermal amorphous materials
• Fractures in complex fluids: the case of transient networks
• Brittle yielding of amorphous solids at finite shear rates
• Continuum modelling of shear start-up in soft glassy materials
• Yielding and bifurcated aging in nanofibrillar networks