In the 1960s, drillers noticed that certain fluids would firm up if they flowed too fast. Researchers have finally explained why.
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“Viscosity is one of the most important things you want to be able to predict and control and characterize,” said, a chemical engineer at Princeton University who came across Metzner and Marshall’s 1967 paper on the subject as a graduate student. “I was like, ‘This is kind of embarrassing that even after decades of profound research we still have no idea why the viscosity is what it is, and how to explain the increase.
In theory, something like this should be almost impossible. Regular fluids are heavily influenced by inertia, their tendency to keep flowing. Water, for example, has a lot of inertia. As water moves faster and faster, small streams within the flow will start to outpace other sections of the fluid, leading to chaotic eddies.
A second type of turbulence had to be at work. When liquids containing long molecular chains flow sedately, these polymers simply float along like little barges. But as the flow rate increases, the molecules begin to twirl and tumble. The molecular motion pushes on the liquid and generates a phenomenon called elastic turbulence, which scientists still don’t fully understand.
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