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Content archived on 2024-05-28

Ultrasound-based techniques for soft jammed materials

Objective

"Soft materials are involved in most parts of our everyday life. In spite of a tremendous industrial importance, their properties still confront the physicists with challenging questions. Indeed, the constituents of soft materials are often stuck into a disordered structure, as for oil droplets in a concentrated emulsion like mayonnaise and for attractive particles in a colloidal gel. This phenomenon is known as ""jamming"" and leads to solid-like properties at rest that slowly evolve in time as the system ""ages"" under spontaneous rearrangements. When a jammed material is submitted to some external stress, a ""yielding"" transition from solid to liquid behaviour is commonly observed. Besides the fundamental issues raised by such out-of-equilibrium, glassy features, the design of soft materials that can strongly respond to a well-controlled excitation is of great interest for practical applications.

This project aims at developing original tools for both physical investigation and design of soft jammed materials, based on the use of ultrasound. We will first set up ultrafast ultrasonic imaging techniques in the single and multiple scattering regimes in an attempt to overcome some limitations of current optical methods and to elucidate jamming, aging and yielding processes in a wide variety of model and real materials. High-intensity ultrasound will then be used to mechanically stress jammed materials and trigger local rearrangements or even large-scale structuration, leading to new insights into the physics of jamming and to innovations in the field of material design."

Call for proposal

ERC-2010-StG_20091028
See other projects for this call

Host institution

ECOLE NORMALE SUPERIEURE DE LYON
EU contribution
€ 1 305 378,00
Address
PARVIS RENE DESCARTES 15
69342 Lyon
France

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Region
Auvergne-Rhône-Alpes Rhône-Alpes Rhône
Activity type
Higher or Secondary Education Establishments
Principal investigator
Sébastien Manneville (Prof.)
Administrative Contact
Jeremy Pretet (Dr.)
Links
Total cost
No data

Beneficiaries (1)