Rheology Trip to University of Delaware

Cadets Charles Keith, Michael Deegan, and Michael Clark accompanied by their faculty advisor LTC Matthew Armstrong, who recently collaborated with Jeff Horner, Dr. Norman Wagner and Dr. Antony Beris at University of Delaware, to conduct steady state, sawtooth, step up/down, large amplitude oscillatory shear, unidirectional oscillatory shear and strain-rate-frequency superposition transient experiments on a 6-mL sample of blood. Each of the cadets is currently fitting a different model to the data to look for goodness of fit, and then to make appropriate correlations with previous data to determine if different levels of HDL/LDL, hematocrit, glucose, etc. impact the bulk rheology of blood. They also aim to determine if the model parameter values are affected in a statistically significant manner by varying those blood parameters. Cadet Charles is working with the Bautista-Monero-Puig (BMP) model that uses an evolving fluidity term; Cadet Deegan is using the Horner-Armstrong-Wagner-Beris (HAWB) modified White-Metzner model; and Cadet Clark is using the Herschel-Bulkley/Stickel model, which he intends to modify with an evolving structural, thixotropy parameter.