Slow Coarsening in Jammed Athermal Soft Particle Suspensions

Chacko, R. N.; Sollich, P.; Fielding, S. M.

Abstract

We simulate a densely jammed, athermal assembly of repulsive soft particles immersed in a solvent. Starting from an initial condition corresponding to a quench from a high temperature, we find nontrivial slow dynamics driven by a gradual release of stored elastic energy, with the root mean squared particle speed decaying as a power law in time with a fractional exponent. This decay is accompanied by the presence within the assembly of spatially localized and temporally intermittent “hot spots” of nonaffine deformation, connected by long-ranged swirls in the velocity field, reminiscent of the local plastic events and long-ranged elastic propagation that have been intensively studied in sheared amorphous materials. The pattern of hot spots progressively coarsens, with the hot-spot size and separation slowly growing over time, and the associated correlation length in particle speed increasing as a sublinear power law. Each individual spot, however, exists only transiently within an overall picture of strongly intermittent dynamics.

Citation

Chacko, R., Sollich, P., & Fielding, S. (2019). Slow Coarsening in Jammed Athermal Soft Particle Suspensions. Physical Review Letters, 123(10), Article 108001. https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.123.108001

• Journal Article Type: Article
• Acceptance Date: Aug 7, 2019
• Online Publication Date: Sep 4, 2019
• Publication Date: Sep 6, 2019
• Deposit Date: Sep 10, 2019
• Publicly Available Date: Sep 10, 2019
• Journal: Physical Review Letters
• Print ISSN: 0031-9007
• Electronic ISSN: 1079-7114
• Publisher: American Physical Society
• Peer Reviewed: Peer Reviewed
• Volume: 123
• Issue: 10
• Article Number: 108001
• DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/physrevlett.123.108001
• Public URL: https://durham-repository.worktribe.com/output/1287535