Yield Stress Materials in Soft Condensed Matter

TL;DR

This review comprehensively discusses the physical behavior, experimental measurement techniques, and recent theoretical advances related to yield stress materials in soft condensed matter, highlighting their nonlinear flow properties and complex dynamics.

Contribution

It provides an integrated overview of experimental and theoretical developments in understanding yield stress phenomena in diverse soft materials.

Findings

Identification of key microscopic mechanisms underlying yield stress behavior

Recent progress in modeling flow dynamics and shear band formation

Insights into the effects of aging, wall slip, and non-local interactions

Abstract

We present a comprehensive review of the physical behavior of yield stress materials in soft condensed matter, which encompass a broad range of materials from colloidal assemblies and gels to emulsions and non-Brownian suspensions. All these disordered materials display a nonlinear flow behavior in response to external mechanical forces, due to the existence of a finite force threshold for flow to occur: the yield stress. We discuss both the physical origin and rheological consequences associated with this nonlinear behavior, and give an overview of experimental techniques available to measure the yield stress. We discuss recent progress concerning a microscopic theoretical description of the flow dynamics of yield stress materials, emphasizing in particular the role played by relaxation time scales, the interplay between shear flow and aging behavior, the existence of inhomogeneous shear flows and shear bands, wall slip, and non-local effects in confined geometries.