Related papers: Rheology of fractal networks
Power law rheology is of widespread occurrence in complex materials that are characterized by the presence of a very broad range of microstructural length and time scales. Although phenomenological models able to reproduce the observed…
Attractive colloidal gels exhibit solid-like behavior at vanishingly small fractions of solids, owing to ramified space-spanning networks that form due to particle-particle interactions. These networks give the gel its rigidity, and as the…
We analyse the rheological behaviour of the generalised Maxwell and Kelvin-Voigt models with a power law spectrum of relaxation or retardation times, ${\cal H}\sim 1/\tau^{\alpha}$ or ${\cal L}\sim \tau^\alpha$, respectively. When…
Fractal structure emerges spontaneously from the chemical cross\-linking of monomers into hydrogels, and has been directly linked to power law visco\-elasticity at the gel transition, as recently demonstrated for isostatic…
Soft particulate gels include materials we can eat, squeeze, or 3D print. From foods to bio-inks to cement hydrates, these gels are composed of a small amount of particulate matter (proteins, polymers, colloidal particles, or agglomerates…
We develop a model for gels and entangled solutions of semiflexible biopolymers such as F-actin. Such networks play a crucial structural role in the cytoskeleton of cells. We show that the rheologic properties of these networks can result…
Many organisms have an elastic skeleton that consists of a closed shell of epithelial cells that is filled with fluid, and can actively regulate both elastic forces in the shell and hydrostatic pressure inside it. In this work we introduce…
We study the dynamical rheology of spring networks with a percolation model constructed by bond dilution in a two-dimensional triangular lattice. Hydrodynamic interactions are implemented by a Stokesian viscous coupling between the network…
Folded protein hydrogels are prime candidates as tuneable biomaterials but it is unclear to what extent their mechanical properties have mesoscopic, as opposed to molecular origins. To address this, we probe hydrogels of the muscle-derived…
Predicting the mechanical response of the soft gel materials under external deformation is of paramount importance in many areas, such as foods, pharmaceuticals, solid-liquid separations, cosmetics, aerogels and drug delivery. Most of the…
The macroscopic properties, the properties of individual components and how those components interact with each other are three important aspects of a composited structure. An understanding of the interplay between them is essential in the…
Relations between static and dynamic viscoelastic responses in gels can be very elucidating and may provide useful tools to study the behavior of bio-materials such as protein hydrogels. An important example comes from the viscoelasticity…
We study computationally the creep and yielding of athermal gels and fibre network materials under a constant imposed shear stress, within a minimal model of interconnected filaments with central forces in $d=2$ spatial dimensions. Each…
Soft materials often exhibit a distinctive power-law viscoelastic response arising from broad distribution of time-scales present in their complex internal structure. A promising tool to accurately describe the rheological behaviour of soft…
Dispersed colloidal particles within a suspension can aggregate and spontaneously self-organize into a robust, percolating structure known as a gel. These network-like structures are prevalent in nature and play a critical role in many…
We present a comprehensive review of the current state of fracture phenomena in transient networks, a wide class of viscoelastic fluids. We will first define what is a fracture in a complex fluid, and recall the main structural and…
A family of marginally-rigid (isostatic) spring networks with fractal structure up to a controllable length was devised and the viscoelastic spectra $G^{*}(\omega)$ calculated. Two non-trivial scaling regimes were observed,…
Semiflexible polymers such as filamentous actin play a vital role in the mechanical behavior of cells, yet the basic properties of cross-linked F-actin networks remain poorly understood. To address this issue, we have performed numerical…
Rigidity percolation (RP) is the emergence of mechanical stability in networks. Motivated by the experimentally observed fractal nature of materials like colloidal gels and disordered fiber networks, we study RP in a fractal network.…
The relaxation of an elastic network, constructed by a contact map of a fractal (crumpled) polymer globule is investigated. We found that: i) the slowest mode of the network is separated from the rest of the spectrum by a wide gap, and ii)…