Soft materials may break irreversibly upon applying sufficiently large shear oscillations, a process which physical mechanism remains largely elusive. In this work, the rupture of protein gels made of sodium caseinate under an oscillatory stress is shown to occur in an abrupt, brittle-like manner. Upon increasing the stress amplitude, the build-up of harmonic modes in the strain response can be rescaled for all gel concentrations. This rescaling yields an empirical criterion to predict the rupture point way before the samples are significantly damaged. "Fatigue" experiments under stress oscillations of constant amplitude can be mapped onto the former results, which indicates that rupture is independent of the temporal pathway in which strain and damage accumulate. Finally, using ultrasonic imaging, we measure the local mechanical properties of the gels before, during and after breakdown, showing that the strain field remains perfectly homogeneous up to rupture but suddenly gives way to a solid-fluid phase separation upon breakdown.
Imprinting Macroscopic Fracture during Gelation: A Mechanism for Tuning Colloidal Gels
ENSL, CNRS, Laboratoire de physique（法国国家科学研究中心物理实验室）；Department of Polymer Engineering, IPC, University of Minho（米尼奥大学高分子工程系）；Institut Universitaire de France (IUF)（法兰西学院）
Tuning local microstructure of colloidal gels by ultrasound-activated deformable inclusions
胶态凝胶具有对先前剪切事件的记忆，包括稳定的和振荡的。这种嵌入微结构中的记忆会影响凝胶的机械响应，因此可以在精心准备的情况下精确调节材料特性。在这里，我们演示了如何动态的可变形的夹杂物，即气泡，可用于局部调整的胶体凝胶的微观结构。我们研究了两种不同的气泡动力学现象，适用于局部应变周围的材料：溶解由于传质，与$10^{-3}$ S $^{-1}$的特征应变速率;和体积振荡由超声驱动，与$10^4$ S $^{-1}$的特征频率。我们用共聚焦显微镜和粒子跟踪法对Hele-Shaw几何模型中气泡周围的胶体凝胶的微观结构进行了实验研究。在气泡溶解实验中，我们观察到在气泡表面附近形成溶剂袋，但微观结构发生了微小变化。在超声诱导的气泡振荡的实验中，我们观察到一个惊人的重新排列的凝胶颗粒成一个微结构，增加了当地的秩序。高速明场显微镜揭示了高频气泡振荡和稳定的微流流动的发生;两者都有望有助于微观结构中局部秩序的出现。这些意见开辟了道路，局部调整的胶体凝胶的基础上可变形的夹杂物控制的外部压力场。
Pinned Boundaries Delay Contraction and Shape Stress Relaxation in Active Gels
School of Physics and Astronomy, Rochester Institute of Technology（罗切斯特理工学院物理与天文学学院）；Department of Physics and Biophysics, University of San Diego（圣地亚哥大学物理与生物物理系）
