Development of tribology equipment to study dynamic processes

Aiming to obtain an engineering understanding of oral processes, tribology equipment has been modified to allow the study of lubrication during a dynamic process. As a model dynamic process, gel samples have been structured under shear to create fluid gels (concentrated gel particulate systems) by using temperature profiles. These temperature profiles are comparable to the ranges available in a rheometer and are compared herein.

An overall pattern has been presented of increasing onset temperature and extent of viscosity or lubrication change with increasing polymer or KCl concentration. However lubrication properties of the material cannot be completely predicted by comparison to rheology data in these cases. Investigating viscosity across a range of samples after production in both pieces of equipment, where no differences were found it is assumed similar particles were produced, in the case of small differences for low concentration samples the high shears associated with the narrow gap sizes in tribology are suggested to have created very small particles leading to a viscosity reduction.