LAUSR

Abstract The rheological measurements are used to study the flow behavior of matter. The aim of this work is to provide an insight into the relationship between shear stress and shear rate of silica gels synthesized from sodium silicate. For this purpose the rheological behavior of colloidal silica gels under oscillatory shear flow was investigated. Six most common flow models were applied to calculate the rheological parameters in terms of the yield stress, viscosity limit, as well as flow behavior and consistency indexes. Moreover, the dependency of shear moduli to frequency was characterized. The results revealed that Mizrahi-Berk model reasonably fits with the experimental data and the rheological behavior of the silica gel shows the non-Newtonian flow response as the shear-thinning mechanism. The flow index value was calculated as 0