Exploring Thixotropic Timescale: Phenomenological Insights and Analytical Perspectives

Thixotropy is characterized by an increase in viscosity when a material is subjected to no flow (quiescent) or weak flow conditions and a decrease in viscosity when it is subjected to strong flow conditions. The characteristic timescale associated with the thixotropic phenomenon, particularly how the viscosity increases with time, has been termed the thixotropic timescale. In the literature, several approaches have been suggested for estimating the thixotropic timescale. The most prominent approach, however, infers it from a specific form of a kinetic expression for structure parameter evolution. In this paper, we study the various kinds of structural kinetic models, and by carrying out a careful analysis of the same, we propose a parameter for the thixotropic timescale that is associated with the most generic form of the kinetic expression for structure parameter evolution. We observe that when the viscosity of the structural kinetic model undergoes continuous increase with time and eventually diverges under quiescent conditions, which we believe is the most practical scenario, our analysis suggests that increasing the thixotropic timescale weakens the thixotropic character of a system. We also propose a new phenomenological measure of the thixotropic timescale: ${{τ}_{thix}}={{\left( d\text{ln}η/dt \right)}^{-1}}$, where $η$ is viscosity and $t$ is time. The proposed definition allows a straightforward and unique way to determine thixotropic timescale through experiments and agrees well with the conventional notion of thixotropy.