A new insight into the dependence of relaxation time on frequency in viscoelastic surfactant solutions: From experimental to modeling study.

Hypothesis: The relaxation time in viscoelastic surfactant solutions is a function of temperature, salt/surfactant concentrations, resting conditions, as well as shear frequency. The simplistic assumption of a single and constant relaxation time is not representative of all relaxation modes in these solutions especially at high frequencies.

Experiments: Steady-state and oscillatory measurements are carried out to study the effects of high temperature, concentration and resting condition on the rheology of surfactants/salt mixtures including a non-ionic and a zwitterionic/anionic surfactant system. Furthermore, a novel semi-empirical rheological model is deducted based on Cates theory.This model introduces, for the first time, a frequency-dependence for the continuous relaxation time spectrum.

Findings: At high temperatures, the non-ionic surfactant become more viscoelastic and the zwitterionic/anionic system loses its viscoelasticity. The addition of surfactant/salt improves the viscoelasticity of both systems, and, for the zwitterionic/anionic mixture, increasing the resting temperature improves its viscoelasticity. In addition, the proposed model significantly improves predictions of traditional Maxwell model for different viscoelastic surfactant solutions (using data from this study and the literature) for a considerable range of surfactant and salt combinations at a wide range of temperature.