I am trying to get the rheological data for blended hydrogel while I will use carrageenan and gelatine. Previously I used only carrageenan where I used 550 um gap taking from the reference from a paper. Now I am going to blend the 2 hydrogel. I can not understand how to determine the gap for new sample.

Is there any particular parameter to check to determine the actual gap? and also could anyone please describe what is the important of loading gap?

I am using 40 mm parallel plate geometry and TA instrument. I will be grateful if anyone can give me brief discussion of each steps of gap determination.

Thanking