Title:	Quantitative earthquake-like statistical properties of the flow of soft materials below yield stress
Authors:	Bera, P.K. Majumdar, Sayantan Ouillon, G. +2 Co-Authors
Issue Date:	Jan-2020
Publisher:	Springer Nature
Citation:	Nature Communications, 2020, Vol. 11, Article.9
Abstract:	The flow behavior of soft materials below the yield stress can be rich and is not fully understood. Here, we report shear-stress-induced reorganization of three-dimensional solid-like soft materials formed by closely packed nematic domains of surfactant micelles and a repulsive Wigner glass formed by anisotropic clay nano-discs having ionic interactions. The creep response of both the systems below the yield stress results in angular velocity fluctuations of the shearing plate showing large temporal burst-like events that resemble seismic foreshocks-aftershocks data measuring the ground motion during earthquake avalanches. We find that the statistical properties of the quake events inside such a burst map on to the scaling relations for magnitude and frequency distribution of earthquakes, given by Gutenberg-Richter and Omori laws, and follow a power-law distribution of the inter-occurrence waiting time. In situ polarized optical microscopy reveals that during these events the system self-organizes to a much stronger solid-like state.
Description:	Open Access.
URI:	http://hdl.handle.net/2289/7458
ISSN:	2041-1723 (online)
Alternative Location:	https://ui.adsabs.harvard.edu/abs/2020NatCo..11....9B/abstract https://doi.org/10.1038/s41467-019-13790-2
Copyright:	2020 Springer Nature
Additional information:	Supplementary information available
Appears in Collections:	Research Papers (SCM)

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