Spatial cooperativity in soft glassy flows

Reference

Goyon, J., Colin, A., Ovarlez, G., Ajdari, A., Bocquet, L., Nature 454 (2008).

Keywords

spatial cooperativity, glass, velocity profile, shear stress, shear strain, Couette cell

Summary

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This paper deals with studying non-local effects at and above the glass transition in an emulsion. A general feature of glassy materials is a strong nonlinear flow rule relating stress and strain. This feature is no well-documented and poorly understood. The authors develop a law governing flows of glassy materials, using a local velocity measurement technique to measure the local flow of a film of confined glassy material.