Squeezing flow of a highly viscous incompressible liquid pressed between slightly inclined lubricated wide plates

The theoretical force-height relationships of Newtonian and pseudo plastic liquids compressed between slightly tilted frictionless plates are compared with those produced when the plates are perfectly parallel. It is shown that a very small inclination angle can distort the flow curve to such an extent that a Newtonian liquid will appear as a pseudo plastic fluid, and a pseudo plastic liquid as having a flow index considerably smaller than its true one. The shape of the biaxial elongational viscosity vs biaxial strain rate relationship is also highly sensitive to the plates' inclination angle. Thus, if an experimental force-height relationship is used to determine a material's biaxial elongational viscosity, an unsuspected slight tilt will result in a considerable underestimate of the viscosity. A slight tilt will also produce an apparent strain rate dependency in a Newtonian liquid, which obviously does not exist. The mathematical model developed to reach these conclusions was tested with commercial mayonnaise, a self-lubricating fluid. A reasonable agreement was found between the predicted force-height relationships and those experimentally determined at tilts of 1°, 3°, and 5°.