Transient start-up dynamics and shear banding in aging soft glassy materials: Rate-controlled flow field

TL;DR

This paper investigates the transient shear banding phenomena in aging soft glassy materials during start-up flow, revealing that aging and rejuvenation dynamics can cause apparent steady state banding even when the steady state flow curve suggests homogeneous flow.

Contribution

It introduces a fluidity model capturing aging effects and demonstrates the importance of inertia and transient dynamics in shear banding behavior.

Findings

Transient shear banding occurs even with monotonic flow curves.

Aging and rejuvenation compete, affecting steady state flow.

Inertia is crucial for realistic modeling of start-up shear banding.

Abstract

We study the transient start-up dynamics of a fluidity model which captures the rheological behavior of aging soft glassy materials, in a rectilinear shear flow upon application of step shear rate. We observe that when the steady state flow curve is non-monotonic the system shows transient and/or apparent steady state shear banding in close qualitative agreement with experimental observations. Due to a competetion between aging and rejuvenation during the start up, we show that there is an apparent steady state banding at large times even for shear rates such that the steady state flow curve allows for a homogeneous flow. Thus, for aging soft glassy materials, the shear rate for achieving homogeneous flow is not necessarily given by the steady-state flow curve. We also observe that the transient and apparent steady state shear banding behavior is not correlated to negative slope of the stress-strain dependence during the transient. This work also emphasizes that in order to have a realistic description of shear banding behavior in the aging (time dependent) soft glassy materials, consideration of inertia during the start-up dynamics is crucial.