Related papers: Predicting and assessing rupture in protein gels u…
Solids deform and fluids flow, but soft glassy materials, such as emulsions, foams, suspensions, and pastes, exhibit an intricate mix of solid and liquid-like behavior. While much progress has been made to understand their elastic (small…
Amorphous materials as diverse as foams, emulsions, colloidal suspensions and granular media can jam into a rigid, disordered state where they withstand finite shear stresses before yielding. Here we review the current understanding of the…
We show that gels formed by arrested spinodal decomposition of protein solutions exhibit elastic properties in two distinct frequency domains, both elastic moduli exhibiting a remarkably strong dependence on volume fraction. Considering the…
We perform numerical simulations to determine the shear stress and pressure of steady-state shear flow in a soft-disk model in two dimensions at zero temperature in the vicinity of the jamming transition \phi_J. We use critical point…
We use a combination of original light scattering techniques and particles with unique optical properties to investigate the behavior of suspensions of attractive colloids under gravitational stress, following over time the concentration…
Mechanical stress within biological tissue can indicate an anomaly, or can be vital of its function, such as stresses in arteries. Measuring these stresses in tissue is challenging due to the complex, and often unknown, nature of the…
The mechanical responses of dense packings of soft athermal spheres under a finite-rate shear are studied by means of molecular dynamics simulations. We investigate the volume fraction and shear rate dependence of the fluctuations in the…
We investigate experimentally the mechanical response to shear of a 2D packing of grains across the jamming transition. First, we develop a dedicated experimental setup, together with tracking and photoelastic techniques in order to prepare…
We perform numerical simulations of a two-dimensional frictional granular system under oscillatory shear confined by constant pressure. We found that the system undergoes dilatancy as the strain increases. We confirmed that compaction also…
We use molecular dynamics simulations of a simple model to show that dispersions of slightly elongated colloidal particles with long-range dipolar interactions, like ferrofluids, can form a physical (reversible) gel at low volume fractions.…
We study shock formation in vertically oscillated granular layers, using both molecular dynamics simulations and numerical solutions of continuum equations to Navier-Stokes order. A flat layer of grains is thrown up from an oscillating…
Biopolymer gels such as fibrin and collagen networks are known to develop tensile axial stress when subject to torsion. This negative normal stress is opposite to the classical Poynting effect observed for most elastic solids including…
We study experimentally the fracture mechanisms of a model cohesive granular medium consisting of glass beads held together by solidified polymer bridges. The elastic response of this material can be controlled by changing the cross-linking…
We perform molecular dynamic (MD) simulations of frictional non-thermal particles driven by an externally applied shear stress. After the system jams following a transient flow, we probe its mechanical response in order to clarify whether…
The ability to measure protein functionality is critical for the development of plant-based products, particularly with respect to gelation behavior, which is vital for food structure and texture. Small amplitude oscillatory shear tests…
In this work we study onset of nonlinear rheological behavior of a colloidal dispersion of a synthetic hectorite clay, Laponite, at the critical gel state while undergoing sol-gel transition. When subjected to step strain in the nonlinear…
We probe the onset and effect of contact changes in 2D soft harmonic particle packings which are sheared quasistatically under controlled strain. First, we show that in the majority of cases, the first contact changes correspond to the…
Gels are an increasingly important class of soft materials with applications ranging from regenerative medicine to commodity materials. A major drawback of gels is their relative mechanical weakness, which worsens further under strain. We…
Experimental and theoretical observations have agreed that the onset of cavitation in soft materials requires higher tensile pressure than pure water. The extra tensile pressure is required since the cavitating bubble needs to overcome the…
When a rigid object approaches a soft material in a viscous fluid, hydrodynamic stresses arise in the lubricated contact region and deform the soft material. The elastic deformation modifies in turn the flow, hence generating a…