Related papers: Shearing-induced contact pattern formation in hydr…
Many functional materials, such as paints and inks used in applications like coating and 3D printing, are concentrated granular suspensions. In such systems, the contact line dynamics and the internal structure of the suspension interact…
The nonlinear rheology of a soft glassy material is captured by its constitutive relation, shear stress vs shear rate, which is most generally obtained by sweeping up or down the shear rate over a finite temporal window. For a huge amount…
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…
Active matter locally converts chemical energy into mechanical work and, for this reason, it provides new mechanisms of pattern formation. In particular, active gels made of protein motors and filaments are far-from-equilibrium systems that…
Granular materials are ubiquitous in nature and industry; their mechanical behavior has been of academic and engineering interest for centuries. One of the reasons for their rather complex mechanical behavior is that stresses exerted on a…
A sheet of glassy polymers placed in a solvent shows swelling behaviors quite different from that of soft polymers (rubbers and gels). (1) Non-Fickian diffusion (called case II diffusion): As solvent permeates into the sample, a sharp front…
Using extensive non-equilibrium molecular dynamics simulations, we investigate a glassforming binary Lennard-Jones mixture under shear. Both supercooled liquids and glasses are considered. Our focus is on the characterization of…
We numerically study dynamics and correlation length scales of a colloidal liquid in both quiescent and sheared conditions to further understand the origin of slow dynamics and dynamic heterogeneity in glass-forming systems. The simulation…
Self-mated hydrogel contacts show extremely small friction coefficients at low loads but a distinct velocity dependence. Here we combine mesoscopic simulations and experiments to test the polymer-relaxation hypothesis for this velocity…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we show that a simple model of a glassy material exhibits the shear localization phenomenon observed in many complex fluids. At low shear rates, the system separates into a fluidized shear-band and an…
The nonlinear rheological properties of dense suspensions are discussed within simplified models, suggested by a recent first principles approach to the model of Brownian particles in a constant-velocity-gradient solvent flow. Shear…
In multi-component soft matter, interface properties often play a key role in determining the properties of the overall system. The identification of the internal dynamic structures in non-equilibrium situations requires the interface…
The nonequilibrium dynamical behavior and structure formation of end-functionalized semiflexible polymer suspensions under flow are investigated by mesoscale hydrodynamic simulations. The hybrid simulation approach combines the…
When two solids are squeezed together they will in general not make atomic contact everywhere within the nominal (or apparent) contact area. This fact has huge practical implications and must be considered in many technological…
When a film of a liquid suspension of nanoparticles or a polymer solution is deposited on a surface, it may dewet from the surface and as the solvent evaporates the solute particles/polymer can be deposited on the surface in regular line…
After thrown onto a solid substrate, very soft spherical gels bounce repeatedly. Separate rheological measurements suggest that these balls can be treated as nearly elastic. The Hertz contact deformation expected in the static (elastic)…
We study the structure and dynamics of a transient network composed of droplets of microemulsion connected by telechelic polymers. The polymer induces a bridging attraction between droplets without changing their shape. A viscoelastic…
In a recent paper [Phys. Rev. X 12, 031021], we reported experimental observations of ``ultrastable'' states in a shear-jammed granular system subjected to small-amplitude cyclic shear. In such states, all the particle positions and contact…
Colloidal shear thickening presents a significant challenge because the macroscopic rheology becomes increasingly controlled by the microscopic details of short ranged particle interactions in the shear thickening regime. Our measurements…
The contact line of a liquid drop on a solid exerts a nanometrically sharp surface traction. This provides an unprecedented tool to study highly localised and dynamic surface deformations of soft polymer networks. One of the outstanding…