Flow, Jamming, and Glassy Behavior in Soft Materials

The focus of our research is to characterize the flow properties and phase behavior of a variety of soft glassy materials, including suspensions, gels, and oxidizing liquid metals. These materials are important to various industries, including food science, cosmetics, waste management, and micro-electronics. Many applications require materials that can alternate between solid-like and liquid-like behavior. Of critical importance is the stress, which can induce more liquid-like behavior, or more solid-like behavior, depending on the material. Here we present examples of both types of behavior. We examine in detail the yielding behavior of oxidizing liquid metals, and we demonstrate novel measurements of shear-induced elasticity in dilatant particle suspensions. We also demonstrate the role of flow imaging to elucidate the interplay between elastic and viscous behavior in complex fluids.