RHEOLOGICAL STUDY ON MIXTURES OF DIFFERENT MOLECULAR-WEIGHT HYALURONATES

The shear flow of hyaluronate solutions prepared from mixtures of hyal uronates with different molecular weights has been studied. This paper shows that prediction of the rheological behaviour of polymer mixture s at a given polymer concentration is possible knowing the intrinsic v iscosity of the different mixed samples and the general variation of t he specific viscosity versus the overlap parameter C[eta]. These chara cteristics depend on the total ionic strength in solution and have bee n determined for three conditions: in 0.1 M NaCl and at ionic strength s corresponding to hyaluronate concentrations of 5 and 10 g l-1 in pur e water. The differences between the predicted viscosities and the mea sured ones are usually lower than 5% for the three conditions tested.