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Microscopic basis for recovery rheology and the nonequilibrium structure, yielding, and flow of dense particle suspensions

Anoop Mutneja1,2,* and Kenneth S. Schweizer1,2,3,4,†

  • *Contact author: anoop.mutneja2011@gmail.com
  • †Contact author: kschweiz@illinois.edu
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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023004 – Published 1 April, 2026

DOI: https://doi.org/10.1103/7dxn-94gy

Abstract

The recent introduction of recovery rheology has provided qualitatively new physical insights into the yielding and flow of soft matter systems across diverse mechanically driven nonequilibrium protocols by separating the deformation strain into recoverable and unrecoverable components. A striking finding is that the fluidlike response associated with the gradually increasing unrecoverable strain ultimately leads to the continuous yielding transition from a solid to a liquid. We build on the force and particle level Elastically Collective Nonlinear Langevin equation theory of activated dynamics within a nonequilibrium microrheological framework to formulate a general statistical mechanical foundation of step-rate start-up shear response that relates recovery rheology to microscopic structure, relaxation, and elasticity. Quantitative applications to metastable hard and soft sphere colloidal suspensions reveal testable predictions and interconnections between macroscopic and microscopic properties: (1) the steady-state recoverable strain is directly related to the steady-state shear thinning; (2) the transient stress overshoot amplitude varies nonmonotonically with packing fraction and is quantitatively linked to the steady-state recoverable strain; (3) the acquired unrecoverable strain dictates the stress overshoot strain; and (4) the predicted enormous reduction of the structural relaxation time under deformation is inversely related to the unrecoverable strain rate.

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Phys. Rev. Research 8, 023004– Published 1 April, 2026
  • Received 11 December 2025
  • Accepted 4 March 2026
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Published by the American Physical Society under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International license. Further distribution of this work must maintain attribution to the author(s) and the published article's title, journal citation, and DOI.

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