Rheology articles from across Nature Portfolio

Soft composite solids are building blocks for many functional and biological materials, yet it remains challenging to predict their mechanical properties. Zhao et al. propose a criticality framework to connect the mechanics to the critical behaviour near the shear-jamming transition of the dispersed inclusions.

Sedimentation is the settling under the action of gravity of particles suspended in a viscous fluid, a process that is influenced by many physical effects. Here the authors investigate the sedimentation of an achiral particle, a rigid U-shaped disk, in a regime where inertia is negligible and find evidence of chiral trajectories whose handedness is determined by the disk’s initial orientation rather than its shape.

Dense suspensions are granular materials suspended in a liquid at high packing fractions, exhibiting high viscosity. The latter is now shown to be related to the formation of a network of rigid clusters at large shear stress.

Peptide-based coacervates display interesting properties for biomedical applications, however, the link between peptide structure and coacervate material properties remains unclear. Here, the authors report a direct correlation between the primary and secondary structures of the peptides and the viscoelastic properties of the coacervates.

The ability to make precise materials rapidly and at low cost has enabled the growth of the 3D printer market. To tailor products, the flow of materials as well as the assembly pathway are key considerations.

A paper in Communications Physics reports that cornstarch suspensions flowing down slopes form ripples like water does — but via a completely different mechanism, which involves their unusual rheology.

A paper in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences shows that the ridges on finger pads promote grip by acting as a microfluidic array that maintains optimal moisture levels and by deforming when wet to block sweat pores.