Avalanche-like fluidization of a non-Brownian particle gel

Abstract

We report on the fluidization dynamics of an attractive gel composed of non-Brownian particles. Shear start up experiments evidence a heterogeneous yielding scenario: a shear band grows until complete fluidization of the material through sudden avalanche-like events that are distributed heterogeneously along the vorticity direction and correlated to the slip at the moving wall.