Abstract
A capillary instrument is developed for the measurement of the viscoelastic properties of biological fluids, such as saliva and mucus. With the instrument developed, the recoil is measured as a function of applied pressure, enabling one to calculate such important rheological properties as the non-Newtonian viscosity and the elastic shear modulus. In order to determine the reliability of the instrument, a series of measurements were made on a 3% polyisobutylene solution in decalin and the measured values of recoil and viscosity were found to be in very close agreement with those obtained by other instruments (cone-and-plate instrument and flow birefringence). Further measurements were then made on several samples of biological fluids (egg white, saliva, and lung mucus). The results are very encouraging and the method promises a wide application to the characterization of other biological fluids.
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