Yield Stress Aging in Attractive Colloidal Suspensions.

We investigate the origin of yield stress aging in semidense, saline, and turbid suspensions in which structural evolution is rapidly arrested by the formation of thermally irreversible roll-resisting interparticle contacts. By performing optical tweezer three-point bending tests on particle rods, we show that these contacts yield by overcoming a rolling threshold, the critical bending moment of which grows logarithmically with time. We demonstrate that this time-dependent contact-scale rolling threshold controls the suspension yield stress and its aging kinetics. We identify a simple constitutive relation between the contact-scale flexural rigidity and rolling threshold, which transfers to macroscopic scales. This leads us to establishing a constitutive relation between macroscopic shear modulus and yield stress that is generic for an array of colloidal systems.

Contact and macroscopic ageing in colloidal suspensions.

The ageing behaviour of dense suspensions or pastes at rest is almost exclusively attributed to structural dynamics. Here, we identify another ageing process, contact-controlled ageing, consisting of the progressive stiffening of solid-solid contacts of an arrested colloidal suspension. By combining rheometry, confocal microscopy and particle-scale mechanical tests using laser tweezers, we demonstrate that this process governs the shear-modulus ageing of dense aqueous silica and polymer latex suspensions at moderate ionic strengths. We further show that contact-controlled ageing becomes relevant as soon as Coulombic interactions are sufficiently screened out that the formation of solid-solid contacts is not limited by activation barriers. Given that this condition only requires moderate ion concentrations, contact-controlled ageing should be generic in a wide class of materials, such as cements, soils or three-dimensional inks, thus questioning our understanding of ageing dynamics in these systems.

Coupling of elasticity to capillarity in soft aerated materials.

We study the elastic properties of soft solids containing air bubbles. Contrary to standard porous materials, the softness of the matrix allows for a coupling of the matrix elasticity to surface tension forces acting on the bubble surface. Thanks to appropriate experiments on model systems, we demonstrate how the elastic response of the soft porous solid is governed by two dimensionless parameters: the gas volume fraction and a capillary number comparing the elasticity of the matrix with the stiffness of the bubbles. Furthermore, we show that our experimental results are accurately predicted by computations of the shear modulus through a micro-mechanical approach.