Rheological study of the effects of size/shape of graphene oxide and SiO₂ nanoparticles on shear thickening behaviour of polyethylene glycol 400-based fluid: molecular dynamics simulation

ABSTRACT

In this computational study, the effect of the shape and size of graphene oxide (GO) and SiO₂ nanoparticles on the shear thickening Behaviour of the fluids was reported with the molecular dynamics (MD) approach. For this purpose, the viscosity of fluids with C, Si, O, and H atomic arrangements was determined by Tersoff and Lenard-Jones (LJ) interatomic force fields. Atomic stability of the simulated structures was detected after 1.000.000 time-steps, demonstrating the validity of the PEG-400-based STF. Additionally, MD simulation results indicated that addition of zigzag GO and cubic SiO₂ nanoparticles to the pristine fluid would maximise the viscosity of this atomic structure. Numerically, by adding these nanostructures, the viscosity of the simulated fluid was converged to 88 Pa. s and 94 Pa. s, respectively. The jamming viscosity (discontinuous shear-thickening) changes occurred in 70 and 80 s⁻¹ shear rates by adding GO and SiO₂ nanoparticles to the pristine fluid.

KEYWORDS:

• Shear thickening fluids (STFs)
• nanoparticle
• rheology
• molecular dynamics (MD)

Disclosure statement

No potential conflict of interest was reported by the author(s).