A microscopic view of the yielding transition in concentrated emulsions

Abstract

We use a custom shear cell coupled to an optical microscope to investigate at the particle level the yielding transition in concentrated emulsions subjected to an oscillatory shear deformation. By performing experiments lasting thousands of cycles on samples at several volume fractions and for a variety of applied strain amplitudes, we obtain a comprehensive, microscopic picture of the yielding transition. We find that irreversible particle motion sharply increases beyond a volume-fraction dependent critical strain, which is found to be in close agreement with the strain beyond which the stress-strain relation probed in rheology experiments significantly departs from linearity. The shear-induced dynamics are very heterogenous: quiescent particles coexist with two distinct populations of mobile and `supermobile' particles. Dynamic activity exhibits spatial and temporal correlations, with rearrangements events organized in bursts of motion affecting localized regions of the sample. Analogies with other sheared soft materials and with recent work on the transition to irreversibility in sheared complex fluids are briefly discussed.

arXiv comment11 pages, 10 figures. Submitted to Soft Matter

References in corpus (14)

• Dynamics of Viscoplastic Deformation in Amorphous Solids
• Universal nature of particle displacements close to glass and jamming transitions
• A kinetic theory of plastic flow in soft glassy materials
• Three-dimensional imaging of colloidal glasses under steady shear
• Oscillatory athermal quasi-static deformation of a model glass
• Subdiffusion and cage effect in a sheared granular material
• Persistent memory in athermal systems in deformable energy landscapes
• Yielding and microstructure in a 2D jammed material under shear deformation
• Supercooled Liquids Under Shear: Theory and Simulation
• Connecting diffusion and dynamical heterogeneities in actively deformed amorphous systems
• Unexpected drop of dynamical heterogeneities in colloidal suspensions approaching the jamming transition
• Heterogeneous relaxation dynamics in amorphous materials under cyclic loading
• Onset of Irreversibility in Cyclic Shear of Granular Packings
• Microscopic Structural Relaxation in a Sheared Supercooled Colloidal Liquid

Cited by in corpus (54)

• Yield Stress Materials in Soft Condensed Matter
• A random critical point separates brittle and ductile yielding transitions in amorphous materials
• The yielding transition in amorphous solids under oscillatory shear deformation
• Hyperuniform density fluctuations and diverging dynamic correlations in periodically driven colloidal suspensions
• Macroscopic yielding in jammed solids is accompanied by a non-equilibrium first-order transition in particle trajectories
• Glass stability changes the nature of yielding under oscillatory shear
• Formation and growth of shear bands in glasses: existence of an underlying directed percolation transition
• Power-law creep and residual stresses in a carbopol microgel
• Ductile and brittle yielding in thermal and athermal amorphous materials
• Strain localisation above the yielding point in cyclically deformed glasses
• Reversible plastic events during oscillatory deformation of amorphous solids
• Direct observation of percolation in the yielding transition of colloidal glasses
• Strength of Mechanical Memories is Maximal at the Yield Point of a Soft Glass
• Softening and Yielding of Soft Glassy Materials
• Collective nonaffine displacements in amorphous materials during large-amplitude oscillatory shear
• Discontinuous fluidisation transition in assemblies of actively-deforming particles: A new paradigm for collective motion in dense active materials
• Probing relevant ingredients in mean-field approaches for the athermal rheology of yield stress materials
• Mechanical annealing of model glasses: Effects of strain amplitude and temperature
• Beyond linear elasticity: Jammed solids at finite shear strain and rate
• Classification of the reversible-irreversible transitions in particle trajectories across the jamming transition point
• Microscopic precursors of failure in soft matter
• Perspective on Reversible to Irreversible Transitions in Periodic Driven Many Body Systems and Future Directions For Classical and Quantum Systems
• Nonaffine rearrangements of atoms in deformed and quiescent binary glasses
• Role of disorder in finite-amplitude shear of a 2D jammed material
• A stress-controlled shear cell for small-angle light scattering and microscopy
• Yielding, shear banding and brittle failure of amorphous materials
• Criticality and correlated dynamics at the irreversibility transition in periodically driven colloidal suspensions
• Mapping out the glassy landscape of a mesoscopic elastoplastic model
• Local Oscillatory Rheology from Echography
• Deformation profiles and microscopic dynamics of complex fluids during oscillatory shear experiments
• Memory Effects in Schematic Models of Glasses Subjected to Oscillatory Deformation
• A novel setup coupling space-resolved dynamic light scattering and rheometetry unveils the heterogeneous flow field and non-affine dynamics in startup shear of a gel
• Metastability at the Yield-Stress Transition in Soft Glasses
• Shearing small glass-forming systems: a potential energy landscape perspective
• Interplay between an absorbing phase transition and synchronization in a driven granular system
• Yielding transition of a two dimensional glass former under athermal cyclic shear deformation
• Absorbing phase transitions in systems with mediated interactions
• Softening and residual loss modulus of jammed grains under oscillatory shear in an absorbing state
• Exploring particle dynamics in flowing complex fluids using differential dynamic microscopy
• Eigenvalue analysis of stress-strain curve of two-dimensional amorphous solids of dispersed frictional grains with finite shear strain
• Shear modulus and reversible particle trajectories of frictional granular materials under oscillatory shear
• Dynamical and structural properties of an absorbing phase transition: a case study from granular systems
• The effect of a reversible shear transformation on plastic deformation of an amorphous solid
• A Well Defined Glass State Obtained by Oscillatory Shear
• Power fluctuations in sheared amorphous materials: A minimal model
• Theory of rigidity and numerical analysis of density of states of two-dimensional amorphous solids with dispersed frictional grains in the linear response regime
• An exact expression of three-body system for the complex shear modulus of frictional granular materials
• Nonaffine deformation under compression and decompression of a flow-stabilized solid
• Immersed Cantilever Apparatus for Mechanics and Microscopy
• Yielding and memory in a driven mean-field model of glasses
• Computational Methods toward Ultrastable Glasses
• Non-equilibrium first order transition marks the mechanical failure of glasses
• Plastic deformation of a model glass induced by a local shear transformation
• Effect of adhesive interaction on strain stiffening and dissipation in granular gels undergoing yielding