Shear-induced effects on critical concentration fluctuations

Abstract
The effect of a shear flow on the critical behavior of a binary fluid (cyclohexane-aniline) has been investigated by light-scattering techniques. Turbidity and scattered-light-intensity measurements have been made, and the influence of all the independent parameters of the phenomenon were considered, i.e., temperature T, shear rate S, transfer wave vector |q|, and its projection qX along the flow direction X. The data support the Onuki-Kawasaki (OK) description, namely, (i) an effect exists only in the region Sτ>1, with τ the lifetime of concentration fluctuation. (ii) The critical temperature Tc is lowered by the shear, so that Tc=Tc(S)=Tc(0)T0Sσ0, with σ0=13ν and ν=0.630 the standard exponent of the correlation length in fluids. We find experimentally T0=(1.8±0.2)×104 and σ0=0.53±0.03, to be compared with the OK values 1.28 × 104 and 0.529. (iii) The susceptibility χq shows an anisotropy versus X, and follows a mean-field behavior versus temperature. The OK dependence χq1vASσ1[TTc(S)]γ+BSσ2qXω+q2 fits the data well, with σ10.14±0.05 [OK:(2ν1)3ν=0.137], γ1.00±0.06 (OK:γ=1), ω0.40±0.05 (OK:25), except for