0000000000020950
AUTHOR
Jochen Zausch
The build-up and relaxation of stresses in a glass-forming soft-sphere mixture under shear: A computer simulation study
Molecular-dynamics computer simulations in conjunction with Lees-Edwards boundary conditions are used to investigate a glass-forming binary Yukawa fluid under shear. The transition from the elastic response to plastic flow is elucidated by studying the stress relaxation after switching off the shear. We find a slow stress relaxation starting from states in the elastic regime and a fast one starting from states in the plastic-flow regime. We show that these relaxation patterns are related to a different distribution of local microscopic stresses in both cases.
Residual Stresses in Glasses
The history dependence of the glasses formed from flow-melted steady states by a sudden cessation of the shear rate $\dot\gamma$ is studied in colloidal suspensions, by molecular dynamics simulations, and mode-coupling theory. In an ideal glass, stresses relax only partially, leaving behind a finite persistent residual stress. For intermediate times, relaxation curves scale as a function of $\dot\gamma t$, even though no flow is present. The macroscopic stress evolution is connected to a length scale of residual liquefaction displayed by microscopic mean-squared displacements. The theory describes this history dependence of glasses sharing the same thermodynamic state variables, but differi…
A combined molecular dynamics and Monte Carlo study of the approach towards phase separation in colloid-polymer mixtures.
A coarse-grained model for colloid-polymer mixtures is investigated where both colloids and polymer coils are represented as point-like particles interacting with spherically symmetric effective potentials. Colloid-colloid and colloid-polymer interactions are described by Weeks-Chandler-Andersen potentials, while the polymer-polymer interaction is very soft, of strength k(B)T/2 for maximum polymer-polymer overlap. This model can be efficiently simulated both by Monte Carlo and molecular dynamics methods, and its phase diagram closely resembles that of the well-known Asakura-Oosawa model. The static and dynamic properties of the model are presented for systems at critical colloid density, va…
Statics and dynamics of colloid-polymer mixtures near their critical point of phase separation: A computer simulation study of a continuous Asakura–Oosawa model
We propose a new coarse-grained model for the description of liquid-vapor phase separation of colloid-polymer mixtures. The hard-sphere repulsion between colloids and between colloids and polymers, which is used in the well-known Asakura-Oosawa (AO) model, is replaced by Weeks-Chandler-Anderson potentials. Similarly, a soft potential of height comparable to thermal energy is used for the polymer-polymer interaction, rather than treating polymers as ideal gas particles. It is shown by grand-canonical Monte Carlo simulations that this model leads to a coexistence curve that almost coincides with that of the AO model and the Ising critical behavior of static quantities is reproduced. Then the …
From equilibrium to steady state: The transient dynamics of colloidal liquids under shear
We investigate stresses and particle motion during the start up of flow in a colloidal dispersion close to arrest into a glassy state. A combination of molecular dynamics simulation, mode coupling theory and confocal microscopy experiment is used to investigate the origins of the widely observed stress overshoot and (previously not reported) super-diffusive motion in the transient dynamics. A link between the macro-rheological stress versus strain curves and the microscopic particle motion is established. Negative correlations in the transient auto-correlation function of the potential stresses are found responsible for both phenomena, and arise even for homogeneous flows and almost Gaussia…