Thixotropy—a review

The ensuing mechanical response to stressing or straining a structured liquid results in various viscoelastic phenomena, either in the linear region where the microstructure responds linearly with respect to the stress and strain but does not itself change, or in the nonlinear region where the microstructure does change in response to the imposed stresses and strains, but does so reversibly. The complication of thixotropy arises because this reversible, microstructural change itself takes time to come about due to local spatial rearrangement of the components. This frequently found time-response of a microstructure that is itself changing with time makes thixotropic, viscoelastic behaviour one of the greatest challenges facing rheologists today, in terms of its accurate experimental characterisation and its adequate theoretical description. Here a history of thixotropy is given, together with a description of how it is understood today in various parts of the scientific community. Then a mechanistic description of thixotropy is presented, together with a series of applications where thixotropy is important. A list of different examples of thixotropic systems is then given. Finally the various kinds of theories that have been put forward to describe the phenomenon mathematically are listed.