Capillary viscosimetry on ferrofluids.

Experiments performed for different ferrofluids under shear flow have shown that an increase of the magnetic field strength applied to the sample yields an increase of the fluid's viscosity, the so called magnetoviscous effect. It has been shown that the magnitude of the effect is strongly related to the modification of the microstructure of ferrofluids and can be influenced by varying both the dipole-dipole interaction between the particles and the concentration of large particles within the fluid. This result has been further used to synthesize new ferrofluids which, on one hand, are more compatible for technical applications but, on the other hand, led to difficulties for the experimenters in measuring the viscous behavior in the presence of a magnetic field. To overcome this problem, a specially designed ferrofluid-compatible capillary viscometer has been developed. Within this paper, the experimental setup as well as experimental results concerning the investigation of the magnetoviscous effect in both diluted and concentrated cobalt-based ferrofluids are presented.