Normal stress differences in the consolidation of strong colloidal gels

Predicting the mechanical response of the soft gel materials under external deformation is of paramount importance in many areas, such as foods, pharmaceuticals, solid-liquid separations, cosmetics, aerogels and drug delivery.Most ofthe understanding of the elasticity of gel materials is based on the concept of fractal scaling with very little microscopicinsights.Previous experimental observations strongly suggest that the gel material loses the fractal correlations upondeformation and the range of packing fraction up to which the fractal scaling can be applied is very limited.So far, there is no clear understanding of the gel elasticity at high packing fraction and the correct length scale that governsits mechanical response. In this work, we undertake extensive numerical simulations to elucidate the different aspectsof stress transmission in the gel materials. We observe the existence of two percolating networks of compressive andtensile normal forces close to the gel point. We also find that the probability distribution for the compressive andtensile part normalized by their respective mean shows universal behavior irrespective of varied interaction potential,thermal energy and particle size distribution. We alsoidentify the critical internal state parameters such as mean normal force, force anisotropies and the average coordinationnumber and propose simple constitutive relations that relate the different components of the stress to the internal stateparameters.Our resultsstrongly demonstrate that the mechanical response of the gel system is governed mainly by the particle length scalephenomena with a complex interplay between compressive and tensile forces at the particle contact.

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Normal stress differences in the consolidation of strong colloidal gels

Cited by 4 publications

References 60 publications

How surface roughness affects the interparticle interactions at a liquid interface

How surface roughness affects the interparticle interactions at a liquid interface

Consolidation of strong colloidal gels under arbitrary compressive loadings

Micro-mechanical insights into the stress transmission in strongly aggregating colloidal gel

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