How to walk on water and survive bullet impacts? Rheology of complex fluids and simulated polymer gels Explore SDSU 2012 Joris Billen PhD Candidate Computational Science San Diego State University & Claremont Graduate University Supervisor: Prof A. Baljon, Department of Physics (SDSU)
What is a complex fluid? Complex fluids are everywhere: Kitchen (chocolate, mayonaise, milk, ketchup) Human body (blood, mucus) Products (Cosmetics, liquid crystals, Shaving cream) Fluids showing non-linear viscous behaviours, as well as viscoelastic materials, are Complex Fluids. But …what is non-linear viscous and viscoelastic behavior?
Visco-elastic behavior After application of a stress… Permanent deformation: Viscous Restores initial configuration: Elastic Temporary restoration: Visco-elastic Tendons, ligaments, polymers, toothpaste, gels,…
Non-linear viscous behavior: Newtonian VS non-Newtonian? Slope= viscosity
Non-linear viscous behavior: Newtonian VS non-Newtonian? shear thinning shear thickening
How to walk on water? viscosity Shear thickening
How to survive bullet impacts? viscosity Shear thickening
Shear thinning viscosity
Polymer = repeating units of monomers Polymers
Associating polymer gels Reversible Network Polymer chains in a solvent
Rheological response gel Shear rate Viscosity [J.Sprakel et al., Soft Matter (2009)] Newtonian Shear thickening Shear thinning
Applications Wound dressings Cartilage replace- ment / implants Contact lenses Actin filaments Paintball fill Injectable gels Controlled drug delivery Self-healing materials
So … what do you do all day?
Modeling the physics of a polymer gel
Computer simulations of polymer gels 1000 polymer chains of 8 beads long However …we don’t work with pictures but with files of -coordinates of atoms -connections in network
Computer simulations of polymer gels Calculate properties that are impossible to measure experimentally
Our work on the cover of a magazine J. Billen, M. Wilson, A. Rabinovitch, A. R. C. Baljon, Europhys. Lett. 87 (2009) Structure gel network similar to robust computer networks
Thank you for your attention!
Non-Newtonian Dubstep