Tailoring Relaxation Time Spectrum in Soft Glassy Materials

TL;DR

This paper demonstrates that applying controlled deformation to soft glassy materials can tailor their relaxation time spectrum, leading to customizable rheological properties by selectively populating energy wells.

Contribution

It introduces a method to manipulate relaxation spectra in soft glassy materials through deformation, enabling control over their mechanical properties.

Findings

Increased deformation narrows relaxation time spectrum.

Different microstructures respond similarly to deformation.

The approach is potentially universal for various glassy materials.

Abstract

Physical properties of out of equilibrium soft materials depend on time as well as deformation history. In this work we propose to transform this major shortcoming into gain by applying controlled deformation field to tailor the rheological properties. We take advantage of the fact that deformation field of a certain magnitude can prevent particles in an aging soft glassy material from occupying energy wells up to a certain depth, thereby populating only the deeper wells. We employ two soft glassy materials with dissimilar microstructures and demonstrate that increase in strength of deformation field while aging leads to narrowing of spectrum of relaxation times. We believe that, in principle, this philosophy can be universally applied to different kinds of glassy materials by changing nature and strength of impetus.