Big paper published on medium-amplitude rheology (Journal of Rheology)

Congratulations to Luca on his masterpiece work, just published in the Journal of Rheology:

“Continuous relaxation spectra for constitutive models in medium-amplitude oscillatory shear”
Martinetti, L., J. M. Soulages, and R. H. Ewoldt, Journal of Rheology, 62(5), 1271–1298

The work is a tour de force of new theoretical derivations, first-of-their-kind model fitting to experiments, and new molecular insights for a transient polymer network.

We employ the concept of a parameterized continuous spectrum, which can dramatically reduce the number of fit parameters of a model, resulting in a model that is more credible, and with more certainty on parameter values for inferring molecular information.

The framework can be applied generally to a vast library of existing mathematical models (Corotational, Giesekus, etc.). The work demonstrates the potential of using weakly nonlinear oscillations, a developing area of characterization also known as medium-amplitude oscillatory shear (MAOS), to understand complex fluid and soft matter rheology.