The build-up and relaxation of stresses in a glassforming soft-sphere mixture under shear: A computer simulation study

by Dr Jorgen Horbach (Deutsches Zentrum fur Luft- und Raumfahrt e.V. (DLR) Colonia)

Wednesday 25 Feb 2009, 15:00 → 16:00 Europe/Rome

Aula 8 (Dip. di Fisica - Edificio E. Fermi)

An ubiquitous phenomenon in liquids under shear is shear thinning, i.e. a decrease of the effective viscosity with increasing shear rate. In this talk, I investigate the relaxation of stresses when suddenly switching off the shear, analyzing data from a simulation of a binary Yukawa fluid under shear. A slow stress relaxation is found starting from early non-flowing states and a fast one starting from states in the plastic flow regime. These relaxation patterns are related to a different distribution of microscopic stresses in both cases.