Topics

We plan a vivid workshop accessible to a large public including students and young researchers by combining introductory talks followed by shorter conributed talks. Each session will be chaired by an invited speaker to chair the session and host the discussions. Further we propose a long poster session accompanied by some refreshments to motivate a casual atmosphere with intensive discussions. The participants will be able to advertise their poster contributions in 4min flash talks the day before the poster session.

The specific topics and questions that we would like to focus on are the following:

Aging and Relaxation: Time evolution of structure and material properties; stretched and compressed exponential relaxation; elastic effects.

Structural Heterogeneities, Coarsening and Restructuring: Role of coarsening dynamics in phase separating suspensions and mixtures; changes of the structure upon forcing or relaxation; interplay between structural and stress heterogeneities.

Network mechanical properties at Small and Large Amplitude Deformations: specificity of the rheology of networks with respect to dense systems; connection between the linear and non-linear response of networks and their microstructure; fatigue and rheological hysteresis in terms of damage accumulation in soft amorphous solids.

Rigidity Percolation, Soft Modes and Stressed States: onset of mechanical stability and rigidity percolation; role of frozen-in stresses in the network structures; marginality and soft modes in disordered networks related to frozen in stresses; specific character of non-affine rearrangement.

Creep and Precursors to Failure: critical slowing down of dynamics as stress decreases and related scaling laws; microstructural origins of the creep; possibility to define precursors; materials durability.

Design and Control of Mechanical Instabilities: hardening, stress and strain localization; controlling structural damage; coupling between the emergence of strongly non-linear response and specifically designed structural/micromechanical features; role of walls and confinement under deformation.