We report experimental and computational observations of dynamic contact networks for colloidal suspensions undergoing shear thickening. The dense suspensions are comprised of sterically stabilized poly(methyl methacrylate) hard sphere colloids that are spherically symmetric and have varied surface roughness. Confocal rheometry and dissipative particle dynamics simulations show that the shear thickening strength scales exponentially with the scaled deficit contact number and the scaled jamming distance. Rough colloids, which experience additional tangential and rolling constraints, require an average of 1.5 - 2 fewer particle contacts as compared to smooth colloids, in order to generate the same shear thickening strength. This is because the surface roughness enhances geometric friction in a way that the rough colloids do not experience a large change in the free volume near the jamming point. In contrast, smooth colloids must undergo significant reduction in the free volume to support an equivalent shear stress. The available free volume for different colloid roughness is related to the deficiency from the maximum number of nearest neighbors at jamming under shear. Our results further suggest that the force per contact is different for particles with different morphologies.
We study the emergence of discontinuous shear-thickening (DST) in cornstarch, by combining macroscopic rheometry with local Magnetic Resonance Imaging (MRI) measurements. We bring evidence that macroscopic DST is observed only when the flow separates into a low-density flowing and a high-density jammed region. In the shear-thickened steady state, the local rheology in the flowing region, is not DST but, strikingly, is often shear-thinning. Our data thus show that the stress jump measured during DST, in cornstach, does not capture a secondary, high-viscosity branch of the local steady rheology,…
We numerically study the linear response of two-dimensional frictional granular materials under oscillatory shear. The storage modulus $G'$ and the loss modulus $G''$ in the zero strain rate limit depend on the initial strain amplitude of the oscillatory shear before measurement. The shear jammed state (satisfying $G'>0$) can be observed at an amplitude greater than a critical initial strain amplitude. The fragile state is defined by the emergence of liquid-like and solid-like states depending on the form of the initial shear. In this state, the observed $G'$ after the reduction of the strain …
Dense suspension of particles in a liquid exhibit rich, non-Newtonian behaviors such as shear thickening and shear jamming. Shear thickening is known to be enhanced by increasing the particles' frictional interactions and also by making their shape more anisotropic. For shear jamming, however, only the role of interparticle friction has been investigated, while the effect of changing particle shape has so far not been studied systematically. To address this we here synthesize smooth silica particles and design the particle surface chemistry to generate strong frictional interactions such that …
Discontinuous shear-thickening in dense suspensions naturally emerges from the activation of frictional forces by shear flow in non-Brownian systems close to jamming. Yet, this physical picture is incomplete as most experiments study soft colloidal particles subject to thermal fluctuations. To characterise discontinuous shear-thickening in colloidal suspensions we use computer simulations to provide a complete description of the competition between athermal jamming, frictional forces, thermal motion, particle softness, and shear flow. We intentionally neglect hydrodynamics, electrostatics, lub…
We report direct measurements of spatially resolved surface stresses over the entire surface of a dense suspension during discontinuous shear thickening (DST) using Boundary Stress Microscopy (BSM) in a parallel-plate rheometer. We find that large fluctuations in the bulk rheological response at the onset of DST are the result of localized transitions to a state with very high stress, consistent with a fully jammed solid that makes direct contact with the shearing boundaries. That jammed solid like phase (SLP) is rapidly fractured, producing two separate SLPs that propagate in opposite directi…
Particle-based simulations of discontinuous shear thickening (DST) and shear jamming (SJ) suspensions are used to study the role of stress-activated constraints, with an emphasis on resistance to gear-like rolling. Rolling friction decreases the volume fraction required for DST and SJ, in quantitative agreement with real-life suspensions with adhesive surface chemistries and "rough" particle shapes. It sets a distinct structure of the frictional force network compared to only sliding friction, and from a dynamical perspective leads to an increase in the velocity correlation length, in part res…
Simulations are used to study the steady shear rheology of dense suspensions of frictional particles exhibiting discontinuous shear thickening and shear jamming, in which finite-range cohesive interactions result in a yield stress. We develop a constitutive model that combines yielding behavior and shear thinning at low stress with the frictional shear thickening at high stresses, in good agreement with the simulation results. This work shows that there is a distinct difference between solids below the yield stress and in the shear-jammed state, as the two occur at widely separated stress leve…
Shear thickening of particle suspensions is characterized by a transition between lubricated and frictional contacts between the particles. Using 3D numerical simulations, we study how the inter-particle friction coefficient influences the effective macroscopic friction coefficient and hence the microstructure and rheology of dense shear thickening suspensions. We propose expressions for effective friction coefficient in terms of distance to jamming for varying shear stresses and particle friction coefficient values. We find effective friction coefficient to be rather insensitive to interparti…
Recently, we proposed a universal scaling framework that shows shear thickening in dense suspensions is governed by the crossover between two critical points: one associated with frictionless isotropic jamming and a second corresponding to frictional shear jamming. Here, we show that orthogonal perturbations to the flows, an effective method for tuning shear thickening, can also be folded into this universal scaling framework. Specifically, we show that the effect of adding in orthogonal shear perturbations (OSP) can be incorporated by simply altering the scaling variable to include a multipli…
Complex fluids exhibit a variety of exotic flow behaviours under high stresses, such as shear thickening and shear jamming. Rheology is a powerful tool to characterise these flow behaviours over the bulk of the fluid. However, this technique is limited in its ability to probe fluid behaviour in a spatially resolved way. Here, we utilise high-speed imaging and the free-surface geometry in drop impact to study the flow of colloidal suspensions. We report, for the first time, observations of coexisting solid and liquid phases due to shear jamming caused by impact. In addition to observing Newtoni…
Recent advances in shear-thickening suspension rheology suggest a relation between (wet) suspension flow below jamming and (dry) granular physics. To probe this connection, we simulated the contact force networks in suspensions of non-Brownian spheres using the discrete element method (DEM), varying the particle friction coefficient and volume fraction. We find that force networks in these suspensions show quantitative similarities to those in jammed dry grains. As suspensions approach the jamming point, the extrapolated volume fraction and coordination number at jamming are similar to critica…
Particles suspended in a Newtonian fluid raise the viscosity and also generally give rise to a shear-rate dependent rheology. In particular, pronounced shear thickening may be observed at large solid volume fractions. In a recent article (R. Seto, R. Mari, J. F. Morris, and M. M. Denn., Phys. Rev. Lett., 111:218301, 2013) we have considered the minimum set of components to reproduce the experimentally observed shear thickening behavior, including Discontinuous Shear Thickening (DST). We have found frictional contact forces to be essential, and were able to reproduce the experimental behavior b…
Recent studies of athermal systems such as dry grains and dense, non-Brownian suspensions have shown that shear can lead to solidification through the process of shear jamming in grains and discontinuous shear thickening in suspensions. The similarities observed between these two distinct phenomena suggest that the physical processes leading to shear-induced rigidity in athermal materials are universal. We present a non-equilibrium statistical mechanics model, which exhibits the phenomenology of these shear-driven transitions: shear jamming and discontinuous shear thickening in different regio…
Competing time scales generate novelty. Here, we show that a coupling between the time scales imposed by instrument inertia and the formation of inter-particle frictional contacts in shear-thickening suspensions leads to highly asymmetric shear-rate oscillations. Experiments tuning the presence of oscillations by varying the two time-scales validate our model. The observed oscillations give access to a shear-jamming portion of the flow curve that is forbidden in conventional rheometry. Moreover, the oscillation frequency allows us to quantify an intrinsic relaxation time for particle contacts.…
The formation of self-organised structures that resist shear deformation have been discussed in the context of shear jamming and thickening[1-3], with frictional forces playing a key role. However, shear induces geometric features necessary for jamming even in frictionless packings[4]. We analyse conditions for jamming in such assemblies by solving force and torque balance conditions for their contact geometry. We demonstrate, and validate with frictional simulations, that the isostatic condition for mean contact number Z = D + 1 (for spatial dimension D = 2, 3) holds at jamming for both finit…
Dense suspensions can exhibit an abrupt change in their viscosity in response to increasing shear rate. The origin of this discontinuous shear thickening (DST) has been ascribed to the transformation of lubricated contacts to frictional, particle-on-particle contacts. Recent research on the flowing and jamming behavior of dense suspensions has explored the intersection of ideas from granular physics and Stokesian fluid dynamics to better understand this transition from lubricated to frictional rheology. DST is reminiscent of classical phase transitions, and a key question is how interactions b…
Under an increasing applied shear stress ($σ$), viscosity of many dense particulate suspensions increases drastically beyond a stress onset ($σ_0$), a phenomenon known as discontinuous shear-thickening (DST). Recent studies point out that some suspensions can transform into a stress induced solid-like shear jammed (SJ) state at high particle volume fraction ($ϕ$). SJ state develops a finite yield stress and hence is distinct from a shear-thickened state. Here, we study the steady state shear-thickening behaviour of dense suspensions formed by dispersing colloidal polystyrene particles (PS) in …
Dense, stabilized, frictional particulate suspensions in a viscous liquid undergo increasingly strong continuous shear thickening (CST) as the solid packing fraction, $ϕ$, increases above a critical volume fraction, and discontinuous shear thickening (DST) is observed for even higher packing fractions. Recent studies have related shear thickening to a transition from mostly lubricated to predominantly frictional contacts with the increase in stress. The rheology and networks of frictional forces from two and three-dimensional simulations of shear-thickening suspensions are studied. These are a…
We use 2D numerical simulations to study dense suspensions of non-Brownian hard particles using the Critical Load Model (CLM) under constant confining pressures. This simple model shows discontinuous shear thickening (DST) as the tangential forces get activated upon increased shear stresses. By parameterizing a simple binary system of frictional and non-frictional particles of different proportions we show that the jamming packing fraction, at which the viscosity diverges, is controlled by the fraction of frictional contacts. The viscosity of dense suspensions can thereby be expressed as a fun…
In this article, I study the shear thickening of suspensions of frictional dimers by the mean of numerical simulations. I report the evolution of the main parameters of shear thickening, such as the jamming volume fractions in the unthickened and thickened branches of the flow curves, as a function of the aspect ratio of the dimers. The explored aspect ratios range from $1$ (spheres) to $2$ (dimers made of two kissing spheres). I find a rheology qualitatively similar than the one for suspensions of spheres, except for the first normal stress difference $N_1$, which I systematically find negati…
We experimentally investigate the rheology and stress fluctuations of granules densely suspended in silicone oil. We find that both thickening strength and stress fluctuations significantly weaken with oil viscosity $η_0$. Comparison of our rheological results to the Wyart-Cates model for describing different dynamic jamming states suggests a transition from frictional contacts to lubrication interactions as $η_0$ increases. To clarify the contribution from viscous interactions to the rheology, we systematically measure stress fluctuations in various flow states. Reduction of stress fluctuatio…
Dense suspensions of hard particles in a liquid can exhibit strikingly counter-intuitive behavior, such as discontinuous shear thickening (DST) [1-8] and reversible shear jamming (SJ) into a state with finite yield stress [9-13]. Recent studies identified a stress-activated crossover from hydrodynamic interactions to frictional particle contacts to be key for these behaviors [2-4, 6-8, 10, 14]. However, many suspensions exhibit only DST and not SJ. Here we show that particle surface chemistry can play a central role in creating conditions that allow for SJ. We find the system's ability to form…
Rheological phase transitions open the door to the less explored realm of non-equilibrium phase transitions. The main mechanism driving these transitions is usually mechanical perturbation by shear--- an unjamming mechanism. Investigating discontinuous shear thickening (DST) is challenging because the shear counterintuitively acts as a jamming mechanism. Moreover, at the brink of this transition, a thickening material exhibits fluctuations that extend both spatially and temporally. Despite recent extensive research, the origins of such spatiotemporal fluctuations remain unidentified. Here, we …
We report on numerical simulations of simple models of athermal, bidisperse, soft-core, massive disks in two dimensions, as a function of packing fraction $ϕ$, inelasticity of collisions as measured by a parameter $Q$, and applied uniform shear strain rate $\dotγ$. Our particles have contact interactions consisting of normally directed elastic repulsion and viscous dissipation, as well as tangentially directed viscous dissipation, but no inter-particle Coulombic friction. Mapping the phase diagram in the $(ϕ,Q)$ plane for small $\dotγ$, we find a sharp first-order rheological phase transition …
Dynamic particle-scale numerical simulations are used to show that the shear thickening observed in dense colloidal, or Brownian, suspensions is of a similar nature to that observed in non-colloidal suspensions, i.e., a stress-induced transition from a flow of lubricated near-contacting particles to a flow of a frictionally contacting network of particles. Abrupt (or discontinuous) shear thickening is found to be a geometric rather than hydrodynamic phenomenon; it stems from the strong sensitivity of the jamming volume fraction to the nature of contact forces between suspended particles. The t…
We introduce a novel approach to reveal ordering fluctuations in sheared dense suspensions, using line scanning in a combined rheometer and laser scanning confocal microscope. We validate the technique with a moderately dense suspension, observing modest shear-induced ordering and a nearly linear flow profile. At high concentration ($ϕ= 0.55$) and applied stress just below shear thickening, we report ordering fluctuations with high temporal resolution, and directly measure a decrease in order with distance from the suspension's bottom boundary as well as a direct correlation between order and …
We analyse the flow curves of a two-dimensional assembly of granular particles which are interacting via frictional contact forces. For packing fractions slightly below jamming, the fluid undergoes a large scale instability, implying a range of stress and strainrates where no stationary flow can exist. Whereas small systems were shown previously to exhibit hysteretic jumps between the low and high stress branches, large systems exhibit continuous shear thickening arising from averaging unsteady, spatially heterogeneous flows. The observed large scale patterns as well as their dynamics are foun…
The discontinuous shear thickening (DST) of dense suspensions is a remarkable phenomenon in which the viscosity can increase by several orders of magnitude at a critical shear rate. It has the appearance of a first order phase transition between two hypothetical "states" that we have recently identified as Stokes flows with lubricated or frictional contacts, respectively. Here we extend the analogy further by means of novel stress-controlled simulations and show the existence of a non-monotonic steady-state flow curve analogous to a non-monotonic equation of state. While we associate DST with …
Fine particle suspensions (such as cornstarch mixed with water) exhibit dramatic changes in viscosity when sheared, producing fascinating behaviors that captivate children and rheologists alike. Recent examination of these mixtures in simple flow geometries suggests inter-granular repulsion is central to this effect --- for mixtures at rest or shearing slowly, repulsion prevents frictional contacts from forming between particles, whereas, when sheared more forcefully, granular stresses overcome the repulsion allowing particles to interact frictionally and form microscopic structures that resis…
Dense suspensions of colloidal or granular particles can display pronounced non-Newtonian behaviour, such as discontinuous shear thickening (DST) and shear jamming (SJ). The essential contribution of particle surface roughness and adhesive forces confirms that stress-activated contacts can play a key role in these phenomena. By employing a system of microparticles coated by responsive polymers that allow friction, adhesion, and surface roughness to be selectively and independently tuned as a function of temperature, we offer a way to disentangle these contributions. We find that DST occurs at …
