Jamming and Rheology

Book excerpt: The subject of jamming and rheology is a broad and interdisciplinary one that is generating increasing interest. This book deals with one of the oldest unsolved problems in condensed matter physics - that of the nature of glass transition in supercooled liquids. Jamming and Rheology is a collection of reprinted articles from several fields, ranging from structural glasses to foams and granular materials. Glassy relaxation and constrained dynamics (jamming) occur at all scales, from microscopic to macroscopic - in the glass transition of supercooled liquids, in fluids confined to thin films, in the structural arrest of particles such as granular materials, and in foams which must be driven by an applied stress in order to flow. Because jamming occurs at the transition between where a flow occurs and where motion stops, it is hoped that there may be a universal feature that describes this transition in all systems. This volume shows that the systems described above share many common phenomenological features, and covers work done by a wide range of scientists and technologists working in areas from physics to chemistry to chemical and mechanical engineering.