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Relationships between structure, memory and flow in sheared disordered materials

Nature Physics volume 18, pages 565–570 (2022)Cite this article

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Abstract

A fundamental challenge regarding disordered solids is predicting macroscopic yield—the point at which elastic behaviour changes to plastic behaviour—from the microscopic arrangements of constituent particles. Yield is accompanied by a sudden and large increase in energy dissipation due to the onset of plastic rearrangements. This suggests that one path to understanding bulk rheology is to map particle configurations to their mode of deformation. Here, we subject two-dimensional dense colloidal systems to oscillatory shear, measure the particle trajectories and bulk rheology, and quantify particle microstructure using excess entropy. Our results reveal a direct relation between excess entropy and energy dissipation that is insensitive to the nature of interactions amongst particles. We use this relation to build a physically informed model that connects rheology to microstructure. Our findings suggest a framework for tailoring the rheological response of disordered materials by tuning microstructural properties.

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Fig. 1: Overview of structure, dynamics and response.
Fig. 2: Memory within microstructure.
Fig. 3: Entropy and material memories.
Fig. 4: Comparisons of imposed force, microstructural excess entropy and bulk rheology.

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Data availability

Source data are provided with this paper. All data that support the plots within this paper and other findings of this study are available from the corresponding author upon reasonable request. Source data are provided with this paper.

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Acknowledgements

We thank D. Durian, A. Liu, R. Riggleman, I. Regev and S. Kosgodagan Acharige for fruitful discussions. We especially thank A. Liu and R. Riggleman for the generous contribution of computational resources for our simulations. This work is partially funded by University of Pennsylvania’s MRSEC NSF-DMR-1720530 (K.L.G., E.G.T., X.G.M., Ch.K., I.R.G., D.J.J., A.G.Y. and P.E.A.) and by ARO W911-NF-16-1-0290 (K.L.G., D.J.J. and P.E.A.) and by NSF-DMR-2003659 (A.G.Y., X.G.M.). C.R. further thanks the NSF for career award CMMI-2047506.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of Mechanical Engineering and Applied Mechanics, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    K. L. Galloway, Ch. Kammer, C. Reina, D. J. Jerolmack & P. E. Arratia

  2. Department of Bioengineering, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    E. G. Teich

  3. Center for Complex Flows and Soft Matter Research, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    X. G. Ma

  4. Department of Physics, Southern University of Science and Technology, Shenzhen, China

    X. G. Ma

  5. Department of Physics and Astronomy, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    I. R. Graham & A. G. Yodh

  6. Department of Physics, Pennsylvania State University, State College, PA, USA

    N. C. Keim

  7. Department of Earth and Environmental Science, University of Pennsylvania, Philadelphia, PA, USA

    D. J. Jerolmack

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  1. K. L. Galloway
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Contributions

D.J.J., A.G.Y. and P.E.A. designed the research. K.L.G. and N.C.K. conducted the experiments. Ch.K. and I.R.G. ran the simulations. The analysis and model were developed by K.L.G., C.R., X.G.M., A.G.Y. and P.E.A. All authors discussed the results and wrote the manuscript.

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Correspondence to P. E. Arratia.

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Nature Physics thanks Francesco Turci and the other, anonymous, reviewer(s) for their contribution to the peer review of this work.

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Radial distribution function, g(x,y,t), accompanying Fig. 2a.

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Galloway, K.L., Teich, E.G., Ma, X.G. et al. Relationships between structure, memory and flow in sheared disordered materials. Nat. Phys. 18, 565–570 (2022). https://doi.org/10.1038/s41567-022-01536-9

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