EFFECTS OF SHEAR-FLOW ON LONG-RANGED CORRELATIONS, SPINODAL DEMIXING KINETICS, AND THE LOCATION OF THE CRITICAL-POINT AND CLOUD POINT

A derivation of an expression for the shear rate-dependent Ornstein Zernike structure factor is discussed, together with the resulting anomalous behavior of the turbidity. The predicted scaling behavior of the turbidity, comprising the effect of both temperature and shear rate, is in good agreement with experiments on binary fluids. Then initial spinodal decomposition is discussed, and an explicit expression for the time- and shear rate-dependent effective diffusion coefficient is derived, which shows all the typical characteristics of anisotropic light scattering patterns that are observed experimentally for binary fluids. Next it is shown that the spinodal is shifted linearly with the (bare) Peclet number for not too large Peclet numbers, whereas the cloud point is singularly displaced into the unstable region due to a shear flow. This is in agreement with an experiment on a two-polymer/solvent mixture and binary fluid mixtures. It is argued that light scattering is useless to determine the location of the spinodal of a sheared system.