No Arabic abstract
In directionally-dried colloidal dispersions regular bands can appear behind the drying front, inclined at $pm45^circ$ to the drying line. Although these features have been noted to share visual similarities to shear bands in metal, no physical mechanism for their formation has ever been suggested, until very recently. Here, through microscopy of silica and polystyrene dispersions, dried in Hele-Shaw cells, we demonstrate that the bands are indeed associated with local shear strains. We further show how the bands form, that they scale with the thickness of the drying layer, and that they are eliminated by the addition of salt to the drying dispersions. Finally, we reveal the origins of these bands in the compressive forces associated with drying, and show how they affect the optical properties (birefringence) of colloidal films and coatings.
We present simulations for the steady-shear rheology of a model adhesive dispersion. We vary the range of the attractive forces $u$ as well as the strength of the dissipation $b$. For large dissipative forces, the rheology is governed by the Weisenberg number $ text{Wi}sim bdotgamma/u$ and displays Herschel-Bulkley form $sigma = sigma_y+ctext{Wi}^ u$ with exponent $ u=0.45$. Decreasing the strength of dissipation, the scaling with $text{Wi}$ breaks down and inertial effects show up. The stress decreases via the Johnson-Samwer law $Deltasigmasim T_s^{2/3}$, where temperature $T_s$ is exclusively due to shear-induced vibrations. During flow particles prefer to rotate around each other such that the dominant velocities are directed tangentially to the particle surfaces. This tangential channel of energy dissipation and its suppression leads to a discontinuity in the flow curve, and an associated discontinuous shear thinning transition. We set up an analogy with frictional systems, where the phenomenon of discontinuous shear thickening occurs. In both cases tangential forces, frictional or viscous, mediate a transition from one branch of the flowcurve with low tangential dissipation to one with large tangential dissipation.
We report on a new type of experiment that enables us to monitor spatially and temporally heterogeneous dynamic properties in complex fluids. Our approach is based on the analysis of near-field speckles produced by light diffusely reflected from the superficial volume of a strongly scattering medium. By periodic modulation of an incident speckle beam we obtain pixel-wise ensemble averages of the structure function coefficient, a measure of the dynamic activity. To illustrate the application of our approach we follow the different stages in the drying process of a colloidal thin film. We show that we can access ensemble averaged dynamic properties on length scales as small as ten micrometers over the full field of view.
We investigate critical phenomena in colloids by means of the renormalization-group based hierarchical reference theory of fluids (HRT). We focus on three experimentally relevant model systems: namely, the Asakura-Oosawa model of a colloidal dispersion under the influence of polymer-induced attractive depletion forces; fluids with competing short-range attractive and longer-range repulsive interactions; solutions of star-polymers whose pair potential presents both an attractive well and an ultrasoft repulsion at shorter distance. Our results show that the ability to tune the effective interactions between colloidal particles allows one to generate a variety of crossovers to the asymptotic critical behavior, which are not observed in atomic fluids.
How does pore liquid reconfigure within shear bands in wet granular media? Conventional wisdom predicts that liquid is drawn into dilating granular media. We, however, find a depletion of liquid in shear bands despite increased porosity due to dilatancy. This apparent paradox is resolved by a microscale model for liquid transport at low liquid contents induced by rupture and reconfiguration of individual liquid bridges. Measured liquid content profiles show macroscopic depletion bands similar to results of numerical simulations. We derive a modified diffusion description for rupture-induced liquid migration.
The intrinsic viscosity of a dilute dispersion of rigid rods is studied using a recently developed direct numerical simulation (DNS) method for particle dispersions. A reentrant transition from shear-thinning to the 2nd Newtonian regime is successfully reproduced in the present DNS results around a Peclet number ${rm Pe}=150$, which is in good agreement with our theoretical prediction of ${rm Pe}=143$, at which the dynamical crossover from Brownian to non-Brownian behavior takes place in the rotational motion of the rotating rod. The viscosity undershoot is observed in our simulations before reaching the 2nd Newtonian regime. The physical mechanisms behind these behaviors are analyzed in detail.