2023/11/28 by Henry A. Lockwood, Lockwood, Henry A., Molly H. Agar +3 · 1 citation
Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #FOS: Physical sciences #Material Dynamics and Properties #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft) #Theoretical and Computational Physics
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2311.16778
openalex publication_date 2023/11/28 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/03
Motivated by recent experiments studying the creep and breakup of a protein gel under stress, we introduce a simple mesoscopic model for the irreversible failure of gels and fibrous materials, and demonstrate it to capture much of the phenomenology seen experimentally. This includes a primary creep regime in which the shear rate decreases as a power law over several decades of time, a secondary crossover regime in which the shear rate attains a minimum, and a tertiary regime in which the shear rate increases dramatically up to a finite time singularity, signifying irreversible material failure. The model also captures a linear Monkman-Grant scaling of the failure time with the earlier time at which the shear rate attained its minimum, and a Basquin-like power law scaling of the failure time with imposed stress, as seen experimentally. The model furthermore predicts a slow accumulation of low levels of material damage during primary creep, followed by the growth of fractures leading to sudden material failure, as seen experimentally.