The rheology of rigid rod cellulose whisker suspensions has been investigat
ed. The isotropic-at-rest suspension flow curves show two plateaus, one at
low shear rates and another at high shear rates, that reflect the flow of i
sotropic (at low shear rates) or oriented (at high shear rates) suspensions
. From the low shear rate viscosity plateau vs concentration, we see that t
he system is in the semidilute region above 0.02 wt %, in agreement with th
e theoretical predictions. From the same curve, we can estimate a maximum p
acking concentration of whiskers rods that corresponds to the experimentall
y measured isotropic-to-anisotropic transition. The high shear rate plateau
viscosity data show that the. suspension is still in the dilute state abov
e 0.6 wt %. The critical concentration at the dilute-semidilute transition
is thus strongly dependent on the state of order, which suggests that care
has to be taken when measuring parameters extracted from flowing solutions
or suspensions, as for example occurring with Ubbelhode viscometry. Above a
certain critical concentration, the suspensions become anisotropic at rest
. The viscosity vs concentration curve has a maximum that vanishes at high
shear rates as for liquid crystalline polymer solutions. Rheological and rh
eo-optical observations show fast inception and relaxation of both the rheo
logical functions and the texture, in complete contrast with liquid crystal
line polymer solutions.