Tunable shear thickening in active frictional non-Brownian suspensions
School of Engineering, University of Edinburgh（爱丁堡大学工程学院）；Department of Physics, Indian Institute of Science Education and Research Pune（印度科学教育研究所浦那分校物理系）
We study tunable shear thickening in active suspensions of non-Brownian, repulsive, frictional grains using particle-based simulation, finding that activity augments the rheology beyond the friction- mediated shear thickening paradigm. Specifically, up to a crossover activity strength, increasing particle self-propulsion drives a viscosity-reducing `dethickening' of the system at large stresses, where the material would otherwise be in a thickened, highly viscous state. Above this crossover activity strength, the system enters a thickening regime. Self-propulsion introduces additional isotropic dynamics to the particles, which compete with the flow-driven formation of frictional contacts. The degree of dethickening can thus be tuned by varying a suitably-defined dimensionless active stress that quantifies this competition. Recognising the parallels between self-propulsion and other contemporary routes to dethickening, we demonstrate that our data, within the dethickening regime, are consistent with a recently proposed universal scaling framework, offering a route to tuning the rheology of dense suspensions. Moreover, using the obtained scaling relation, we infer how the shear-jamming and shear-thickening regimes can be tuned by choosing an appropriate self-propulsion strength, and partially validate these inferences with targeted simulations.
Kinetic theory for dilute inertial suspension having soft-core potential is theoretically investigated. From the analysis of the scattering process, the expression of the scattering angle is analytically obtained. We derive the flow curve between the viscosity and the shear rate, which shows two-step discontinuous shear thickening when we change the softness of the particles. The molecular dynamics simulation shows that our theoretical results are consistent with the numerical ones.
We develop a tensorial constitutive model for dense, shear-thickening particle suspensions subjected to time-dependent flow. Our model combines a recently proposed evolution equation for the suspension microstructure in rate-independent materials with ideas developed previously to explain the steady flow of shear-thickening ones, whereby friction proliferates among compressive contacts at large particle stresses. We apply our model to shear reversal, and find good qualitative agreement with particle-level, discrete-element simulations whose results we also present.
We study the rheological behaviour of a dense bidispersed suspension varying the relative size of the two dispersed phases. The main outcome of our analysis is that an enhanced flowability (reduced relative viscosity) of the suspension can be achieved by increasing the dispersion ratio of the phases. We explain the observed result by showing that the presence of large particles increases the packing efficiency of the suspension, leading to a reduction of the contribution of the contacts on the overall viscosity of the suspension in the shear-thickening regime, i.e. where the contacts are the d…
To elucidate the key factor for the quantitative prediction of the shear-thickening in suspensions in viscoelastic fluids, direct numerical simulations of many-particle suspensions in a multi-mode Oldroyd-B fluid are performed using the smoothed profile method. Suspension flow under simple shear flow is solved under periodic boundary conditions by using Lees--Edwards boundary conditions for particle dynamics and a time-dependent oblique coordinate system that evolves with mean shear flow for fluid dynamics. Semi-dilute many-particle suspensions up to a particle volume fraction of 0.1 are inves…
Discontinuous shear thickening (DST) is associated with a sharp rise of a suspension's viscosity with increasing applied shear rate. A key signature of DST, highlighted in recent studies, is the very large fluctuations of the measured stress as the suspension thickens. A clear link between microstructural development and the dramatic increase of the stress fluctuations has not been established yet. To identify the microstructural underpinnings of this behavior, we perform simulations of sheared dense suspensions. By analyzing particle contact networks, we identify a subset of constrained parti…
We show that a suspension of non-Brownian calcite particles in glycerol-water mixtures can be tuned continuously from being a yield-stress suspension to a shear-thickening suspension--without a measurable yield stress--by the addition of various surfactants. We interpret our results within a recent theoretical framework that models the rheological effects of stress-dependent constraints on inter-particle motion. Bare calcite particle suspensions are found to have finite yield stresses. In these suspensions, frictional contacts that constrain inter-particle sliding form at an infinitesimal appl…
We report direct measurements of spatially resolved surface stresses of a dense suspension during large amplitude oscillatory shear (LAOS) in the discontinuous shear thickening regime using boundary stress microscopy. Consistent with previous studies, bulk rheology shows a dramatic increase in the complex viscosity above a frequency-dependent critical strain. We find that the viscosity increase is coincident with that appearance of large heterogeneous boundary stresses, indicative of the formation of transient solid-like phases (SLPs) on spatial scales large compared to the particle size. The …
Acoustic modulation of shear thickening transition in dense adhesive suspensions
ENSL, CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique（法国国家科学研究中心里昂高等师范学院物理实验室）；Holcim Innovation Center（豪瑞创新中心）；Department of Polymer Engineering, IPC, University of Minho（米尼奥大学高分子工程系）
Phase transitions and collective dynamics of active colloidal suspensions are fascinating topics in soft matter physics, particularly for out-of-equilibrium systems, which can lead to rich rheological behaviours in the presence of steady shear flow. In this article, the role of self-propulsion in the rheological response of a dense colloidal suspension is investigated by using particle-resolved simulations. First, the interplay between activity and shear in the solid to the liquid transition of the suspension is analysed. While both self-propulsion and shear destroy order and melt the system b…
