Dense suspensions as trainable rheological metafluids

Hojin Kim, Samantha M. Livermore, Stuart J. Rowan, Heinrich M. Jaeger · arXiv · 2025

The study presents dense suspensions with memory-forming properties that enable adaptive rheological responses.

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Plain English summary

This research explores how dense suspensions can be designed to have memory-forming properties, allowing them to adapt their behavior based on different stress levels. By manipulating interactions like friction and chemical bridging, these suspensions can exhibit unique rheological properties, including shear thinning and thickening.

Why this matters

This work highlights a new approach to creating materials that can adapt their viscosity and energy dissipation based on external stress, which could have implications for various applications in material design. Understanding these adaptive responses can lead to advancements in fields that require materials with tunable properties.

Key findings

  • Dense suspensions can exhibit multiple adaptive responses based on stress levels.
  • The interplay of frictional contact and dynamic chemical bridging enables novel rheology.
  • The suspensions can soften or stiffen in response to different stress levels.
  • They demonstrate targeted viscosity and energy dissipation with repeated impacts.
  • These materials can be viewed as trainable rheological metafluids.

What's new

The introduction of memory-forming properties in dense suspensions to achieve multiple adaptive responses is a new concept.

Limitations

The abstract does not specify practical applications or commercial viability of the proposed materials.

Commercial context

The research is still in the conceptual stage and lacks evidence of practical application.

Publication

Publisher
arXiv
Publication date
March 12, 2025
Research type
Preprint
arXiv
2503.09063
Access
open

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Method note: Summaries and ratings on this page are generated by AI from the abstract only. Read the original paper for full context. · Model: gpt-4o-mini-2024-07-18