The Society of Rheology announced the winners of the 2025 Journal of Rheology Publication Award, honoring researchers from the University of California, Santa Barbara and Anton Paar for their collaborative study on polymer flow behavior.

The award-winning paper, titled Flow-concentration coupling determines features of nonhomogeneous flow and shear banding in entangled polymer solutions, was published in the November 2022 issue of the journal. The study examined how flow-induced concentration changes in polymeric fluids affect shear banding—challenging the long-standing assumption that such fluids remain homogeneous under shear.

Researchers Michael C. Burroughs, Yuanyi Zhang, Christopher M. Bates, Matthew E. Helgeson and L. Gary Leal of UCSB, along with Abhishek Shetty of Anton Paar, developed an experimental protocol that enabled simultaneous measurement of stress, velocity and concentration in a Couette shear device.

“This research represents a major step forward,” said Leal. “It shows that the long-held assumption of macroscopic homogeneity... is generally incorrect.”

The Society will recognize the winners at its 2025 Annual Meeting. The Journal of Rheology is published by AIP Publishing on behalf of the Society of Rheology.