Aging under stress and mechanical fragility of soft solids of laponite

In this work, we investigate the aging behavior of soft glassy solids of aqueous suspension of laponite under shear flow. We observe that when an imposed time is normalized by a dominating relaxation time of the system, the rheological response at different ages shows superposition. Analysis of this behavior suggests that the structural evolution with age under a deformation field, as represented by the dependence of dominant relaxation mode on age, becomes weaker as the system becomes progressively less homogeneous due to enhanced attractive interactions caused by addition of salt. Creep-recovery behavior at same elastic modulus shows more viscous dissipation for a system having more salt, demonstrating increase in the mechanical fragility. This study shows that an increase in the concentration of salt, which enhances attractive interactions and causes greater inhomogeneity, leads to a state wherein the particles are held together by weaker interactions. This work leads to important insights into how microstructure affects the aging dynamics. We discuss the observed behavior in the context of aging in colloidal glasses and gels of aqueous suspension of laponite. (C) 2008 American Institute of Physics. [DOI: 10.1063/1.3005999]