  Flow-Induced Self-Assembly (FISA) is the phenomena of particle chaining in
viscoelastic fluids while experiencing shear flow. FISA has a large number of
applications across many fields including material science, food processing and
biomedical engineering. Nonetheless, this phenomena is currently not fully
understood and little has been done in literature so far to investigate the
possible effects of the shear-induced elastic instability. In this work, a
bespoke cone and plate shear cell is used to provide new insights on the FISA
dynamics. In particular, we have fine tuned the applied shear rates to
investigate the chaining phenomenon of micron-sized spherical particles
suspended into a viscoelastic fluid characterised by a distinct onset of
elastic instability. This has allowed us to reveal three phenomena never
reported in literature before, i.e.: (I) the onset of the elastic instability
is strongly correlated with an enhancement of FISA; (II) particle chains break
apart when a constant shear is applied for `sufficiently' long-time (i.e. much
longer than the fluids' longest relaxation time). This latter point correlates
well with the outcomes of parallel superposition shear measurements, which
(III) reveal a fading of the elastic component of the suspending fluid during
continuous shear flows.
