2006/10/05 by Jean-Michel Condre, Christian Ligoure, Luca Cipelletti · 1 citation
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Material Dynamics and Properties #Phase Equilibria and Thermodynamics #Pickering emulsions and particle stabilization #cond-mat.soft
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1742-5468/2007/02/p02010
published as Journal of Statistical Mechanics: Theory and Experiment (2007-02-09) P02010 · 13 pages, 5 figures. Submitted to JSTAT
arxiv created 2006/10/05 · openalex publication_date 2007/02/09 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2016/06/24 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We study experimentally and theoretically the sedimentation of gels made of strongly aggregated colloidal particles, focusing on the long-time behaviour, when mechanical equilibrium is asymptotically reached. The asymptotic gel height is found to vary linearly with the initial height, a finding in stark contrast with a recent study on similar gels. We show that the asymptotic compaction results from the balance between gravity pull, network elasticity and solid friction between the gel and the container walls. Based on these ingredients, we propose a simple model to account for the dependence of the height loss on the initial height and volume fraction. As a result of our analysis, we show that the static friction coefficient between the gel and the container walls strongly depends on the volume fraction: the higher the volume fraction, the weaker the solid friction. This non-intuitive behaviour is explained using simple scaling arguments.