Paper Number
GR11 

Session
Gallery of Rheology Contest

Title
Non-affine displacements in soft gels

Presentation Date and Time
October 23, 2019 (Wednesday) 6:30

Track / Room
Gallery of Rheology / Main Lobby on 3rd floor

Authors (Click on name to view author profile)

1. Bantawa, Minaspi (Georgetown University, Department of Physics)
2. Del Gado, Emanuela (Georgetown University, Department of Physics)

Author and Affiliation Lines (in printed abstract book)
Minaspi Bantawa and Emanuela Del Gado
Department of Physics, Georgetown University, Washington, DC 20007

Speaker / Presenter 
Bantawa, Minaspi

Text of Abstract
The richness and diversity of the rheological response of gel networks could be understood in terms of the propensity to undergo, or not, non-affine motion built-in in specific microstructural features. In gels where connections are sparse, extended softer domains can undergo large non-affine displacements even in presence of a small applied deformation. Gel microstructures which are more tightly and homogeneously connected, instead, will tend to feature smaller and especially more localized non-affine displacements that can be, however, strongly correlated through the efficient propagation of elastic strains.>/p>

The two figures are spatial maps of the microscopic non-affine displacements obtained when model gel networks are subjected to small amplitude oscillatory deformations, showing the case of sparsely and heterogeneously connected gels (left) versus more homogeneously connected ones (right). What are the implications in terms of the linear viscoelastic spectrum of these materials?