ESPCI web site
Mesoscopic modeling - specific ingredients and emergent behaviours
In this talk I will discuss several mesoscopic approaches, such as lattice models and mean-field descriptions for the yielding transition and the non-linear rheology of driven yield-stress materials. Despite the fact that this type of models require some phenomenological ingredients, notably the detailed local yielding rules, they have been shown to match several aspects of the mechanical response very well, such as avalanche statistics, mechanical noise descriptions and rheological features. Further the mesoscopic approach provides an ideal tool to test basic assumptions for different flow phenomena and can serve as a bridge to large scale descriptions of the complex yielding dynamics.