Mechanics of marginal solids

Length, strain, and time scales

Doctoral thesis (2019)

Authors

K. Baumgarten Engineering Thermodynamics - Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering
Research Group
Engineering Thermodynamics (Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering) (TU Delft)
Copyright: © 2019 K. Baumgarten
DOI: https://doi.org/10.4233/uuid:1e32cb50-2e71-4a18-956b-f0331270c9b0
Jamming Elasticity Viscoelastictiy Shear Deformation Emulsions Foams Granular Solids Biological Networks Polymer Networks
More Info
expand_more

Published Date

2019

Language

English

Reuse Rights

Other than for strictly personal use, it is not permitted to download, forward or distribute the text or part of it, without the consent of the author(s) and/or copyright holder(s), unless the work is under an open content license such as Creative Commons.

Faculty

Mechanical, Maritime and Materials Engineering

Department

Process and Energy

Research Group

Engineering Thermodynamics

Abstract

Network materials, foams, and emulsions are ubiquitous in our daily life. We have a good intuition about how they respond as we handle them, but our theoretical understanding is poor. One of their most interesting features is that they are unusually fragile and appear to switch between solid and liquid state seamlessly.
In fact, foams and emulsions undergo a non-equilibrium phase transition as their packing fraction increases - this is the jamming transition. Networks show a similar transition as their connectivity increases, where the material switches from sloppy to rigid.
The fact that these materials undergo a phase transition, opens up the theoretical toolset of statistical mechanics. An important part of current research is therefore dedicated to finding diverging length and time scales and investigating the critical behavior of the systems in detail.
Because the systems in question are highly disordered, analytical modeling is challenging. At the same time there are significant experimental obstacles to approaching the critical point closely. For this reason, the development of simulation software plays an important role - all data presented in this thesis is generated through simulations. As the subtitle of this dissertation suggests, our findings concern length, strain, and time scales which can be found in the linear response to external forces.