Related papers: Shear-induced memory effects in boehmite gels
We exploit the controlled drying of millimeter-sized gel beads to investigate isotropic compression of colloidal fractal gels. Using a custom dynamic light scattering setup, we demonstrate that stresses imposed by drying on the bead surface…
Seemingly identical Bulk Metallic Glasses (BMG) often exhibit strikingly different mechanical properties despite having the same composition and fictive temperature. A postulated mechanism underlying these differences is the presence of…
Cellulose nanocrystals (CNC) are naturally-derived nanostructures of growing importance for the production of composites having attractive mechanical properties, and offer improved sustainability over purely petroleum-based alternatives.…
We present a numerical analysis of the effect of particle elongation on the quasistatic behavior of sheared granular media by means of the Contact Dynamics method. The particle shapes are rounded-cap rectangles characterized by their…
We studied the rheological behavior of a molecular solution composed of $\alpha$-cyclodextrin, water and 4-methylpyridine, a liquid known to undergo inverse melting, at different temperatures and concentrations. The system shows a marked…
Solids are distinguished from fluids by their ability to resist shear. In traditional solids, the resistance to shear is associated with the emergence of broken translational symmetry as exhibited by a non-uniform density pattern, which…
The ubiquitous appearance of regions of localized deformation (shear bands) in different kinds of disordered materials under shear is studied in the context of a mesoscopic model of plasticity. The model may or may not include relaxational…
The rheological response, in particular the non-linear response, to oscillatory shear is experimentally investigated in colloidal glasses. The glasses are highly concentrated binary hard-sphere mixtures with relatively large size…
We investigated the viscoelastic properties of colloid-polymer mixtures at intermediate colloid volume fraction and varying polymer concentrations, thereby tuning the attractive interactions. Within the examined range of polymer…
We study numerically the rheological properties of a slab of active gel close o the isotropic-nematic transition. The flow behavior shows strong dependence on sample size, boundary conditions, and on the bulk constitutive curve, which, on…
Interactions between colloidal particles have hitherto usually been fixed by the suspension composition. Recent experimental developments now enable the control of interactions \emph{in-situ}. Here we use Brownian dynamics simulations to…
We investigate the collective behavior of suspended thermoresponsive microgels, that expel solvent and subsequently decrease in size upon heating. Using a binary mixture of differently thermoresponsive microgels, we demonstrate how…
We present here a microscopic study of the effect of shear on a dense purely repulsive colloidal suspension. We use Multispeckle Diffusing Wave Spectroscopy to monitor the transient motions of colloidal particles after being submitted to an…
We study the solid mechanical properties of several thixotropic suspensions as a function of the shear stress history applied during their flow stoppage and their aging in their solid state. We show that their elastic modulus and yield…
We investigate colloidal suspensions under shear flow through numerical experiments. By measuring the time-correlation function of a bond-orientational order parameter, we find a divergent time scale near a transition point from a…
A mixture of hard-sphere particles and model emulsion droplets is studied with a Brownian dynamics simulation. We find that the addition of nonwetting emulsion droplets to a suspension of pure hard spheres can lead to both gas-liquid and…
Amorphous solids display a ductile to brittle transition as the kinetic stability of the quiescent glass is increased, which leads to a material failure controlled by the sudden emergence of a macroscopic shear band in quasi-static…
Memory effect reflects a system's ability to encode, retain and retrieve information about its past. Such effects are essentially an out-of-equilibrium phenomenon providing insight into the complex structural and dynamical behavior of the…
Dense emulsions, colloidal gels, microgels, and foams all display a solid-like behavior at rest characterized by a yield stress, above which the material flows like a liquid. Such a fluidization transition often consists of long-lasting…
Simulations of the structure and dynamics of fluid films confined to a thickness of a few molecular diameters are described. Confining walls introduce layering and in-plane order in the adjacent fluid. The latter is essential to transfer of…