Related papers: Shearing-induced contact pattern formation in hydr…
The non-linear response of entangled polymers to shear flow is complicated. Its current understanding is framed mainly as a rheological description in terms of the complex viscosity. However, the full picture requires an assessment of the…
We experimentally study the formation of surface patterns in grafted hydrogel films of nanometer-to-micrometer thicknesses during imbibition-driven swelling followed by evaporation-driven shrinking. Creases are known to form at the hydrogel…
We report, for the first time, some experimental observations regarding a new type of long range interaction between rigid particles that prevails when they are suspended in an soft elastic gel. A denser particle submerges itself to a…
A hydrophilic liquid, such as water, forms hydrogen bonds with a hydrophilic substrate. The strength and locality of the hydrogen bonding interactions prohibit slip of the liquid over the substrate. The question then arises how the contact…
The rheological properties of tangentially propelled flexible polymers under linear shear flow are studied by computer simulations and are compared with analytical calculations. We find a significant impact of the coupled nonequilibrium…
This paper adopts a previously developed activation model of shear thickening, published by the authors, to sterically stabilized colloidal suspensions. When particles arranged along the compression axis of a sheared suspension, they may…
Swelling is a volumetric-growth process in which a porous material expands by spontaneous imbibition of additional pore fluid. Swelling is distinct from other growth processes in that it is inherently poromechanical: Local expansion of the…
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…
Even in simple geometries many complex fluids display non-trivial flow fields, with regions where shear is concentrated. The possibility for such shear banding has been known since several decades, but the recent years have seen an upsurge…
Many soft materials, including foams, dense emulsions, micro gel bead suspensions, star polymers, dense packing of surfactant onion micelles, and textured morphologies of liquid crystals, share the basic "glassy" features of structural…
Letting free polymers diffuse from solution into a crosslinked polymer gel is often a crucial processing step in the synthesis of multiphase polymer-based gels, e.g., core-shell microgels. Here we use coarse-grained molecular dynamics…
The rheological properties of biological tissues are core to processes such as cancer metastasis, wound healing and embryo development. The emergence of tissue and organ structures during morphogenesis requires the precise formation of…
Hydrogels have had a profound impact in the fields of tissue engineering, drug delivery, and materials science as a whole. Due to the network architecture of these materials, imbibement with water often results in uniform swelling and…
We report on the transient frictional response of contacts between a rigid spherical glass probe and a micrometer-thick poly(dimethylacrylamide) hydrogel film grafted onto a glass substrate when a lateral relative motion is applied to the…
True contact between randomly rough solids consists of myriad individual micro-junctions. While their total area controls the adhesive friction force of the interface, other macroscopic features, including viscoelastic friction, wear,…
The properties of a semiflexible polymer with fixed ends exposed to oscillatory shear flow are investigated by simulations. The two-dimensionally confined polymer is modeled as a linear bead-spring chain, and the interaction with the fluid…
Dispersing small particles in a liquid can produce surprising behaviors when the solids fraction becomes large: rapid shearing drives these systems out of equilibrium and can lead to dramatic increases in viscosity (shear-thickening) or…
We report on the poroelastic indentation response of hydrogel thin films geometrically confined within contacts with rigid spherical probes of radii in the millimeter range. Poly(PEGMA) (poly(ethylene glycol)) methyl ether methacrylate),…
Liquid droplets on soft solids, such as soft polymeric gels, can induce substantial surface deformations, leading to the formation of wetting ridges at contact points. While these contact ridges have been shown to govern the rich surface…
We study the shear induced fluidization of amorphous solids subjected to external loading by investigating the relaxation dynamics of the deformed states using computer simulation. A simple shear deformation is employed at constant rate to…