Computer simulations of the breakup of colloid aggregates

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Abstract
Computer simulations of the breakup of thermally stable, fully flocculated colloidal gels were performed in monolayers under shear flow. The study was of the transient response and breakup of the aggregate gels under applied strain, and their relation to the angular rigidity of the colloidal bond. The evolution of the stress showed a power law behavior which is interpreted by scaling arguments. A scaling theory is presented for the behavior in arbitrary dimensions. In our simulations the failure of individual colloidal bonds was monitored, and for bonds with angular rigidity the dominant mode was found to be bending failure aggravated by tension.