Finding bridges in packings of colloidal spheres

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Jenkins, Matthew and Haw, Mark D. and Barker, Gary and Poon, Wilson and Egelhaaf, Stefan (2011) Finding bridges in packings of colloidal spheres. Soft Matter, 7 (2). pp. 684-690. ISSN 1744-6848 (https://doi.org/10.1039/c0sm00544d)

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Abstract

We identify putative load-bearing structures (bridges) in experimental colloidal systems studied by confocal microscopy. Bridges are co-operative structures that have been used to explain stability and inhomogeneous force transmission in simulated granular packings with a range of densities. We show that bridges similar to those found in granular simulations are present in real experimental colloidal packings. We describe critically the bridge-finding procedure for real experimental data and propose a new criterion-Lowest Mean Squared Separation (LSQS)-for selecting optimum stabilisations.

ORCID iDs

Jenkins, Matthew, Haw, Mark D. ORCID logoORCID: https://orcid.org/0000-0003-3736-1857, Barker, Gary, Poon, Wilson and Egelhaaf, Stefan;
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