On the universality of the flow properties of soft-particle glasses

Abstract

We identify the minimal interparticle interactions necessary for a particle dynamics simulation to predict the structure and flow behaviour of soft particle glasses (SPGs). Generally, two kinds of forces between the particles must be accounted for in simulations of SPGs: viscous or frictional drag forces and elastic contact forces. Far field drag forces are required to dissipate energy in the simulations and capture the effect of the rheology of the suspending fluid. Elastic forces are found to be dominant compared to near-field drag or other forms of friction forces and are the most important component to compute the rheology. The shear stress, the first and second normal stress differences for different interparticle force laws collapse onto universal master curves of the Herschel–Bulkley form by non-dimensionalizing the stress with the yield stress and the shear rate with the viscosity of the suspending fluid divided by the low-frequency shear modulus. The Herschel–Bulkley exponents are close to 0.5 with a slight dependence on the repulsive pairwise elastic forces.