Flow birefringence of cellulose nanocrystal suspensions in three-dimensional flow fields: revisiting the stress-optic law

TL;DR

This paper revisits the stress-optic law for cellulose nanocrystal suspensions, demonstrating that including the stress component along the optical axis improves the prediction of flow birefringence in three-dimensional flows.

Contribution

It introduces a second-order stress-optic law that accounts for the optical axis component, enhancing the accuracy of birefringence predictions in CNC suspensions under flow.

Findings

Second-order SOL aligns better with experimental data.

Retardation at the channel center scales with flow rate squared.

Stress component along optical axis is crucial at high flow rates.

Abstract

This study systematically investigates the flow birefringence of cellulose nanocrystal (CNC) suspensions. The aim is to clarify the importance of the stress component along the camera's optical axis in the stress-optic law (SOL), which describes the relationship between birefringence, the retardation of transmitted polarized light, and the stress field. More than 100 datasets pertaining to the retardation of CNC suspensions (concentrations of 0.1, 0.3, 0.5, and 1.0 wt\%) in a laminar flow field within a rectangular channel (aspect ratios of 0.1, 1, and 3) are systematically obtained. The measured retardation data are compared with the predictions given by the conventional SOL excluding the stress component along the camera's optical axis and by the SOL including these components as second-order terms (2nd-order SOL). The results show that the 2nd-order SOL gives a significantly better agreement with the measurements. Based on the 2nd-order SOL, the retardation at the center of the channel, where the effect of the stress component along the camera's optical axis is most pronounced, is predicted to be proportional to the square of the flow rate, which agrees with the experimental data. The results confirm the importance of considering the stress component along the camera's optical axis in the flow birefringence of CNC suspensions at high flow rates, even for quasi-two-dimensional channel flow.