An official website of the United States government
Many soft materials yield under mechanical loading, but how this transition from solid-like behavior to liquid-like behavior occurs can vary significantly. Understanding the physics of yielding is of great interest for the behavior of biological, environmental, and industrial materials, including those used as inks in additive manufacturing and muds and soils. For some materials, the yielding transition is gradual, while others yield abruptly. We refer to these behaviors as being ductile and brittle. The key rheological signatures of brittle yielding include a stress overshoot in steady-shear-startup tests and a steep increase in the loss modulus during oscillatory amplitude sweeps. In this work, we show how this spectrum of yielding behaviors may be accounted for in a continuum model for yield stress materials by introducing a parameter we call the brittility factor. Physically, an increased brittility decreases the contribution of recoverable deformation to plastic deformation, which impacts the rate at which yielding occurs. The model predictions are successfully compared to results of different rheological protocols from a number of real yield stress fluids with different microstructures, indicating the general applicability of the phenomenon of brittility. Our study shows that the brittility of soft materials plays a critical role in determining the rate of the yielding transition and provides a simple tool for understanding its effects under various loading conditions.
more »
« less
Understanding the transient large amplitude oscillatory shear behavior of yield stress fluids
A full understanding of the sequence of processes exhibited by yield stress fluids under large amplitude oscillatory shearing is developed using multiple experimental and analytical approaches. A novel component rate Lissajous curve, where the rates at which strain is acquired unrecoverably and recoverably are plotted against each other, is introduced and its utility is demonstrated by application to the analytical responses of four simple viscoelastic models. Using the component rate space, yielding and unyielding are identified by changes in the way strain is acquired, from recoverably to unrecoverably and back again. The behaviors are investigated by comparing the experimental results with predictions from the elastic Bingham model that is constructed using the Oldroyd–Prager formalism and the recently proposed continuous model by Kamani, Donley, and Rogers in which yielding is enhanced by rapid acquisition of elastic strain. The physical interpretation gained from the transient large amplitude oscillatory shear (LAOS) data is compared to the results from the analytical sequence of physical processes framework and a novel time-resolved Pipkin space. The component rate figures, therefore, provide an independent test of the interpretations of the sequence of physical processes analysis that can also be applied to other LAOS analysis frameworks. Each of these methods, the component rates, the sequence of physical processes analysis, and the time-resolved Pipkin diagrams, unambigiously identifies the same material physics, showing that yield stress fluids go through a sequence of physical processes that includes elastic deformation, gradual yielding, plastic flow, and gradual unyielding.
more »
« less
- Award ID(s):
- 1847389
- PAR ID:
- 10440272
- Publisher / Repository:
- Society of Rheology
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Journal of Rheology
- Volume:
- 67
- Issue:
- 2
- ISSN:
- 0148-6055
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- p. 331-352
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
More Like this
-
-
null (Ed.)We report direct measurements of spatially resolved surface stresses of a dense suspension during large amplitude oscillatory shear (LAOS) in the discontinuous shear thickening regime using boundary stress microscopy. Consistent with previous studies, bulk rheology shows a dramatic increase in the complex viscosity above a frequency-dependent critical strain. We find that the viscosity increase is coincident with that appearance of large heterogeneous boundary stresses, indicative of the formation of transient solid-like phases (SLPs) on spatial scales large compared to the particle size. The critical strain for the appearance of SLPs is largely determined by the peak oscillatory stress, which depends on the peak shear rate and the frequency-dependent suspension viscosity. The SLPs dissipate and reform on each cycle, with a spatial pattern that is highly variable at low frequencies but remarkably persistent at the highest frequency measured ( ω = 10 rad s −1 ).more » « less
-
The influence of the pore topology and polymer properties on mechanical characteristics of asymmetric polyethersulfone (PES) and symmetric polyvinylidene fluoride (PVDF) microfiltration membranes was investigated by conducting elongation, creep, stress relaxation, small-amplitude oscillatory and bubble point pressure tests. The main aspects of the membrane stress-strain curves were found to be similar despite significant differences in the pore topology and polymer properties. While the Kelvin-Voigt model for solid polymers described the membrane viscoelastic response below the transition to ductile yielding, the stress-strain curves of membranes and solid polymers above the yield point appeared to be drastically different. All tested membranes demonstrated weak strain hardening, low sensitivity to strain rate, significant elastic recovery, stress relaxation and reduction of the bubble point pressure with accumulation of plastic deformation. Therefore, tensile stresses exerted on a membrane under assembling and process conditions should be smaller than the yield stress to assure that they will not impair filter performance. The novelty of our approach is the use of models for perforated plates to evaluate membrane mechanical properties as ductile yielding for both proceeds via localized plastic deformation around pores. Presented results provide a reliable framework for development of membranes with properties tailored to applications.more » « less
-
Soft particulate gels can reversibly yield when sufficient deformation is applied, and the characteristics of this transition can be enhanced or limited by designing hybrid hydrogel composites. While the microscopic dynamics and macroscopic rheology of these systems have been studied separately in detail, the development of direct connections between the two has been difficult, particularly with regard to the nonlinear rheology. To bridge this gap, we perform a series of large amplitude oscillatory shear (LAOS) numerical measurements on model soft particulate gels at different volume fractions using coarse-grained molecular dynamics simulations. We first study a particulate network with local bending stiffness and then we combine it with a second component that can provide additional cross-linking to obtain two-component networks. Through the sequence of physical processes (SPP) framework, we define time-resolved dynamic moduli, and by tracking the changes in these moduli through the period, we can distinguish transitions in the material behavior as a function of time. This approach helps us establish the microscopic origin of the nonlinear rheology by connecting the changes in dynamic moduli to the corresponding microstructural changes during the deformation including the nonaffine displacement of particles, and the breakage, formation, and orientation of bonds.more » « less
-
Understanding the yielding of complex fluids is an important rheological challenge that affects our ability to engineer and process materials for a wide variety of applications. Common theoretical understandings of yield stress fluids follow the Oldroyd–Prager formalism in which the material behavior below the yield stress is treated as solidlike, and above the yield stress as liquidlike, with an instantaneous transition between the two states. This formalism was built on a quasi-static approach to the yield stress, while most applications, ranging from material processing to end user applications, involve a transient approach to yielding over a finite timescale. Using stress-controlled oscillatory shear experiments, we show that yield stress fluids flow below their yield stresses. This is quantified through measuring the strain shift, which is the value about which the strain oscillates during a stress-controlled test and is a function of only the unrecoverable strain. Measurements of the strain shift are, therefore, measurements of flow having taken place. These experimental results are compared to the Herschel–Bulkley form of the Saramito model, which utilizes the Oldroyd–Prager formalism, and the recently published Kamani–Donley–Rogers (KDR) model, in which one constitutive equation represents the entire range of material responses. Scaling relationships are derived, which allow us to show why yield stress fluids will flow across all stresses, above and below their yield stress. Finally, derivations are presented that show strain shift can be used to determine average metrics previously attainable only through recovery rheology, and these are experimentally verified.more » « less
