Related papers: Predicting and assessing rupture in protein gels u…
Biomaterials such as protein or polysaccharide gels are known to behave qualitatively as soft solids and to rupture under an external load. Combining optical and ultrasonic imaging to shear rheology we show that the failure scenario of a…
We examine microstructural and mechanical changes which occur during oscillatory shear flow and reformation after flow cessation of an intermediate volume fraction colloidal gel using rheometry and Brownian Dynamics (BD) simulations. A…
We study model near-critical polymer gelling systems made of gluten proteins dispersions stabilized at different distances from the gel point. We impose different shear rates and follow the time evolution of the stress. For sufficiently…
Fatigue refers to the changes in material properties caused by repeatedly applied loads. It has been widely studied for, e.g., construction materials, but much less has been done on soft materials. Here, we characterize the fatigue dynamics…
We report on the response of a yield stress material, namely a colloidal gel made of attractive carbon black particles, submitted to large amplitude oscillatory shear stress (LAOStress). At a constant stress amplitude well below its…
The behavior of shear-oscillated amorphous materials is studied using a coarse-grained model. Samples are prepared at different degrees of annealing and then subject to athermal and quasistatic oscillatory deformations at various fixed…
Colloidal gels form through the sol-gel transition of attractive particle suspensions, where local aggregation leads to a space-spanning network with solid-like properties. Their microstructure and mechanical properties are highly sensitive…
Attractive colloidal gels display a solid-to-fluid transition as shear stresses above the yield stress are applied. This shear-induced transition is involved in virtually any application of colloidal gels. It is also crucial for controlling…
We investigate the spatial correlations of microscopic stresses in soft particulate gels, using 2D and 3D numerical simulations. We use a recently developed theoretical framework predicting the analytical form of stress-stress correlations…
Oscillatory shear has been widely used to study the rheological properties of suspensions under unsteady shear. Furthermore, recent works have shown that oscillatory flows can improve the flowability of dense suspensions. While most studies…
Motivated by recent experiments studying the creep and breakup of a protein gel under stress, we introduce a simple mesoscopic model for the irreversible failure of gels and fibrous materials, and demonstrate it to capture much of the…
Polymer gels behave as soft viscoelastic solids and exhibit a generic nonlinear mechanical response characterized by pronounced stiffening prior to irreversible failure, most often through macroscopic fractures. Here, we aim at capturing…
Fracture of highly stretched materials challenges our view of how things break. We directly visualize rupture of tough double-network (DN) gels at >50\% strain. During fracture, crack tip shapes obey a $x\sim y^{1.6}$ power-law, in contrast…
Soft particulate gels can reversibly yield when sufficient deformation is applied, and the characteristics of this transition can be enhanced or limited by designing hybrid hydrogel composites. While the microscopic dynamics and macroscopic…
A droplet of surfactant spreading on an ultrasoft ($E \lesssim 100$ Pa) gel substrate will produce capillary fractures at the gel surface; these fractures originate at the contact-line and propagate outwards in a starburst pattern. There is…
Strongly confined colloidal dispersions under shear can exhibit a variety of dynamical phenomena, including depinning transitions and complex structural changes. Here, we investigate the behaviour of such systems under pure oscillatory…
We present experiments and simulations on cyclically sheared colloidal gels, and probe their behaviour on several different length scales. The shearing induces structural changes in the experimental gel, changing particles' neighborhoods…
We numerically investigate the athermal creep deformation of amorphous materials having a wide range of stability. The imposed shear stress serves as the control parameter, allowing us to examine the time-dependent transient response…
Natural rubber is obtained by processing natural rubber latex, a liquid colloidal suspension that rapidly gels after exudation from the tree. We prepared such gels by acidification, in a large range of particle volume fractions, and…
We study creep flow and yielding of particulate depletion gels under constant shear stress, combining data on different length and time scales. We characterise the breakage of meso-scale strands in the gel. Breakage events are distributed…