ABSTRACT
A particulate dispersion is expected to exhibit viscoelastic behavior if one or more of the following conditions are met: the particles are composed of some soft rubberlike solid material. The continuous-phase liquid is purely viscous. The particles are deformable liquid droplets composed of viscoelastic liquid. The continuous-phase liquid of the dispersion is viscoelastic. Both the continuous phase and the dispersed phase were assumed to be incompressible and Newtonian. The effect of interfacial tension was also considered in the analysis. The properties of the effective medium are then determined by supposing that if a small portion of the effective homogeneous medium is replaced by the actual components of the dispersion, no difference in rheological behavior would be detected by macroscopic observations. The rheological behavior of dispersions of deformable liquid droplets coated with some additive is dependent on the rheological characteristics of the film formed by the additive.
