Revealing Actual Viscoelastic Relaxation Times in Capillary Breakup

We use experiments and theory to elucidate the size effect in capillary breakup rheometry, where pre-stretching in the visco-capillary stage causes the apparent relaxation time to be consistently smaller than the actual value. We propose a method accounting for both the experimental size and the finite extensibility of polymers to extract the actual relaxation time. A phase diagram characterizes the expected measurement variability and delineates scaling law conditions. The results refine capillary breakup rheometry for viscoelastic fluids and advance the understanding of breakup dynamics across scales.