%0 Journal Article %J Physical Review Letters %D 2011 %T Stress enhancement in the delayed yielding of colloidal gels %A Sprakel, Joris %A Lindstroem, Stefan B. %A Kodger, Thomas E. %A Weitz, David A %X Networks of aggregated colloidal particles are solidlike and can sustain an applied shear stress while exhibiting little or no creep; however, ultimately they will catastrophically fail. We show that the time delay for this yielding decreases in two distinct exponential regimes with applied stress. This behavior is universal and found for a variety of colloidal gel systems. We present a bond-rupture model that quantitatively describes this behavior and highlights the role of mesoscopic structures. Our result gives new insight into the nature of yielding in these soft solid materials. %B Physical Review Letters %V 106 %P 248303 %G eng %U https://journals.aps.org/prl/abstract/10.1103/PhysRevLett.106.248303 %N 24