Related papers: Nonlinear viscoelasticity and generalized failure …
Soft materials may break irreversibly upon applying sufficiently large shear oscillations, a process which physical mechanism remains largely elusive. In this work, the rupture of protein gels made of sodium caseinate under an oscillatory…
By mixing glass beads with a curable polymer we create a well-defined cohesive granular medium, held together by solidified, and hence elastic, capillary bridges. This material has a geometry similar to a wet packing of beads, but with an…
We investigate the delayed rupture of biopolymer gels under a constant shear load by simultaneous dynamic light scattering and rheology measurements. We unveil the crucial role of normal stresses built up during gelation: all samples that…
This is an integrated experimental and theoretical study of the dynamics and rheology of self-crosslinked, slightly charged, temperature responsive soft Poly(N-isopropylacrylamide) (pNIPAM) microgels over a wide range of concentration and…
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…
Physically assembled gels have promising applications in many fields because of their tunable mechanical properties. Here, we report the mechanical properties as a function of polymer volume fraction ($\phi$) for a physical gel system…
We report a novel approach based on the non-equilibrium self-consistent generalized Langevin equation (NESCGLE) theory that allows for the first principles prediction of the zero-shear viscosity in glass- and- gel-forming materials. This…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we determine the linear and nonlinear viscoelastic properties of a model polymer melt in the unentangled regime. Several approaches are compared for the computation of linear moduli, including…
We consider gelation of colloidal particles in suspension after cessation of shear flow. Particle aggregation is driven by a temperature-tunable attractive potential which controls the growth of clusters under isothermal conditions. A…
A geometrically nonlinear continuum mechanical theory is formulated for deformation and failure behaviors of amorphous polymers. The model seeks to capture material response over a range of loading rates, temperatures, and stress states…
The mechanics of cohesive or cemented granular materials is complex, combining the heterogeneous responses of granular media, like force chains, with clearly defined material properties. Here, we use a discrete element model (DEM)…
A nematic liquid-crystal gel is a macroscopically homogeneous elastic medium with the rotational symmetry of a nematic liquid crystal. In this paper, we develop a general approach to the study of these gels that incorporates all underlying…
Glassy polymers are central to engineering applications, yet their viscoelastic response over broad frequency and temperature ranges remains difficult to characterize. We extend non-affine deformation theory by incorporating a…
The response of amorphous materials to an applied strain can be continuous, or instead display a macroscopic stress drop when a shear band nucleates. Such discontinuous response can be observed if the initial configuration is very stable.…
Over the last half-century, linear viscoelastic models for crack growth in soft solids have flourished but their predictions have rarely been compared to experiments. In fact, most available models are either very approximate or cast in…
We propose a first-principles theoretical approach for the description of the aging of the linear viscoelastic properties of a colloidal liquid after a sudden quench into a dynamically arrested (glass or gel) state. Specifically, we couple…
Flow-induced failure of granular materials is relevant to a broad range of geomechanical applications. Plasticity, which is the inherent failure mechanism of most granular materials, enables large deformations that can invalidate linearised…
Yielding of amorphous glasses and gels is a mechanically driven transformation of a material from the solid to liquid state on the experimental timescale. It is a ubiquitous fundamental problem of nonequilibrium physics of high importance…
We investigate experimentally the adherence energy $\Gamma$ of model polyacrylate Pressure Sensitive Adhesives (PSAs) with combined large strain rheological measurements in uniaxial extension and an instrumented peel test. We develop a…
Colloidal gels are widely applied in industry due to their rheological character -- no flow takes place below the yield stress. Such property enables gels to maintain uniform distribution in practical formulations; otherwise, solid…