Spatial stress correlations in strong colloidal gel

TL;DR

This study explores the unique stress correlation behaviors in soft colloidal gels, revealing how pressure fluctuations and force networks evolve from inhomogeneous, anisotropic structures near the gel point to homogeneous, isotropic states at higher pressures.

Contribution

It provides the first systematic analysis of stress correlations in colloidal gels, highlighting the transition from fractal-like structures to normal elastic behavior as pressure increases.

Findings

Pressure fluctuations decay slower than normal near the gel point.

Force networks are inhomogeneous and anisotropic at low pressure.

Pressure fluctuations become normal and force networks homogeneous at high pressure.

Abstract

In this work, we systematically investigate for the first time the nature of stress correlations in soft colloidal gel materials which support tensile and compressive forces as well as finite rolling torque, as a function of system pressure. Similar to previous studies on frictional granular matter with only compressive forces and without any rolling torque, the full stress autocorrelation matrix is dictated by the pressure and torque autocorrelations due to mechanical balance and material isotropy constraints. Surprisingly, it is observed that the gel materials do not behave as a normal elastic solid close to the gel point as assumed loosely in the literature because the real space pressure fluctuations decay slower than the normal. We also demonstrate that at low pressure the fractal like structural correlation determines the pressure fluctuations and this is manifested in the real space in terms of inhomogeneous and anisotropic force networks formed due to large voids. Far away from the gel point, as the voids collapse under compression, the force chain network becomes homogeneous and isotropic and the pressure fluctuations become normal leading to normal elastic decay at long range, behaving similar to frictionless granular matter and glass. We also observe that the torque autocorrelation is not hyperuniform in the presence of rolling resistance close to the gel point. Furthermore, we link the abnormal pressure fluctuations to the non-hyperuniform behaviour of the system with respect to the local packing fraction fluctuations, thus relating the deviations from the normal elastic behaviour across various non-equilibrium systems under a common framework.