The nonlinear rheology of a soft glassy material is captured by its constitutive relation, shear stress versus shear rate, which is most generally obtained by sweeping up or down the shear rate over a finite temporal window. For a huge amount of complex fluids, the up and down sweeps do not superimpose and define a rheological hysteresis loop. By means of extensive rheometry coupled to time-resolved velocimetry, we unravel the local scenario involved in rheological hysteresis for various types of well-studied soft materials. We introduce two observables that quantify the hysteresis in macroscopic rheology and local velocimetry, respectively, as a function of the sweep rate $\delta t^{-1}$. Strikingly, both observables present a robust maximum with $\delta t$, which defines a single material-dependent time scale that grows continuously from vanishingly small values in simple yield stress fluids to large values for strongly time-dependent materials. In line with recent theoretical arguments, these experimental results hint at a universal time scale-based framework for soft glassy materials, where inhomogeneous flows characterized by shear bands and/or pluglike flow play a central role.

• Received 17 July 2012

DOI:https://doi.org/10.1103/PhysRevLett.110.018304