Influence of boundary conditions on yielding in a soft glassy material

Thomas Gibaud (1) , Catherine Barentin (2) , Sébastien Manneville (1)

1 Phys-ENS - Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS Lyon
2 LPMCN - Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée et Nanostructures

The yielding behavior of a sheared Laponite suspension is investigated within a 1 mm gap under two different boundary conditions. No-slip conditions, ensured by using rough walls, lead to shear localization as already reported in various soft glassy materials. When apparent wall slip is allowed using a smooth geometry, the sample is shown to break up into macroscopic solid pieces that get slowly eroded by the surrounding fluidized material up to the point where the whole sample is fluid. Such a drastic effect of boundary conditions on yielding suggests the existence of some macroscopic characteristic length that could be connected to cooperativity effects in jammed materials under shear.

Keywords: Yielding; Wall slip; Soft Glassy Materials

Domains: Physics [physics]; Condensed Matter [cond-mat]; Soft Condensed Matter [cond-mat.soft]

Thomas Gibaud, Catherine Barentin, Sébastien Manneville. Influence of boundary conditions on yielding in a soft glassy material. Physical Review Letters, 2008, 101 (25), pp.258302. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevLett.101.258302⟩. ⟨ensl-00303121v2⟩