Elastic Response of Wire Frame Glasses. I. Two Dimensional Model

Abstract

We study the elastic response of concentrated suspensions of rigid wire frame particles to a step strain. These particles are constructed from infinitely thin, rigid rods of length $L$. We specifically compare straight rod-like particles to bent and branched wire frames. In dense suspensions the wire frames are frozen in a disordered state by the topological entanglements between their arms. We present a simple, geometric method to find the scaling of the elastic stress with concentration in these glassy systems. We apply this method to a simple 2D model system where a test particle is placed on a plane and constrained by a random distribution of points with number density $\nu$. Two striking differences between wire frame and rod suspensions are found: 1) The linear elasticity per particle for wire frames is very large, scaling like $\nu^2 L^4$, whereas for rods it much smaller and independent of concentration. 2) Rods always shear thin but wire frames shear harden for densities less than $\sim \sqrt{K/k_B T L^4}$, where $K$ is the bending modulus of the particles. The deformation of wire frames is found to be important even for small strains, with the proportion of deformed particles at a particular strain, $\gamma$, being given by $(\nu L^2)^2 \gamma^2$. Our results agree well with a simple simulation of the 2D system.