With the objective to study and evaluate the dispersion characteristics and/or the ease with which fumed silica disperses in a fluid, a set of procedures and experimental conditions were evaluated. The variables changed to develop the test were: geometry, fluid viscosity, shearing time and shear rates. The resulting method consists of steps of shearing at a specific shear rate followed by dynamic oscillatory measurements in the LVR of the material. Fig. 1 shows the resulting ‘dispersion' curves for commercial fumed silica (Cabosil M5) at two different shearing conditions (500 and 3000 s-1). It can be seen that the higher the shear rate the shorter the time to reach the maximum in elasticity and the lower the final viscosity of the resulting dispersion. It is hypothesized that the maximum in dispersion is due to the ability of the fractal fumed silica particles to, once opened up or pulled apart from the agglomerated state, form flocs that will entrap more fluid. This results in an increase in the effective volume fraction and hence an increase in the elastic modulus. Upon shearing this ‘optimum' flocculated state is lost, the resulting flocs become denser due to erosion and/or fracture. This process decreases the volume fraction and consequently the elastic modulus. The flow profiles of the fumed silica dispersions after the ‘dispersion' test showed marked differences especially at low shear rates. The results shown suggest that the size of the flocs changes depending on the shearing conditions i.e., shear rate and time; in addition, the size of the flocs seems to control the rheological properties of the resulting dispersion.