Subscribe to the gold package and get unlimited access to Shamra Academy
Register a new userShear thickening of cornstarch suspensions
335
0
0.0
(
0
)
Authors
Abdoulaye Fall
Ask ChatGPT about the research
No Arabic abstract
We study the rheology of cornstarch suspensions, a non-Brownian particle system that exhibits discontinuous shear thickening. Using magnetic resonance imaging (MRI), the local properties of the flow are obtained by the determination of local velocity profiles and concentrations in a Couette cell. For low rotational rates, we observe shear localization characteristic of yield stress fluids. When the overall shear rate is increased, the width of the sheared region increases. The discontinuous shear thickening is found to set in at the end of this shear localization regime when all of the fluid is sheared: the existence of a nonflowing region, thus, seems to prevent or delay shear thickening. Macroscopic observations using different measurement geometries show that the smaller the gap of the shear cell, the lower the shear rate at which shear thickening sets in. We, thus, propose that the discontinuous shear thickening of cornstarch suspensions is a consequence of dilatancy: the system under flow attempts to dilate but instead undergoes a jamming transition, because it is confined. This proposition is confirmed by an independent measurement of the dilation of the suspension as a function of the shear rate. It is also explains the MRI observations: when flow is localized, the nonflowing region plays the role of a dilatancy reservoir which allows the material to be sheared without jamming.
rate research
Read More
Shear thickening of suspensions is studied by discrete-particle simulation, accounting for hydrodynamic, repulsive, and contact forces. The contact forces, including friction, are activated when the imposed shear stress $sigma$ is able to overcome the repulsive force. The simulation method captures strong continuous and discontinuous shear thickening (CST and DST) in the range of solid volume fraction $0.54 le phile 0.56$ studied here. This work presents characteristics of the contact force network developed in the suspension under shear. The number of frictional contacts per particle $Z$ is shown to have a one-to-one relationship with the suspension stress, and the conditions for simple percolation of frictional contacts are found to deviate strongly from those of a random network model. The stress is shown to have important correlations with topological invariant metrics of the contact network known as $k$-cores; the $k$-cores are maximal subgraphs (`clusters) in which all member particles have $k$ or more frictional contacts to other members of the same subgraph. Only $kle 3$ is found in this work at solid volume fractions $phi le 0.56$. Distinct relationships between the suspension rheology and the $k$-cores are found. One is that the stress susceptibility, defined as $partial sigma/partial dot{gamma}$ where $dot{gamma}$ is the shear rate, is found to peak at the condition of onset of the $3$-core, regardless of whether the system exhibits CST or DST. A second is that the stress per particle within cores of different $k$ increases sharply with increase of $k$ at the onset of DST; in CST, the difference is mild.
Recent theories predict that discontinuous shear-thickening (DST) involves an instability, the nature of which remains elusive. Here, we explore unsteady dynamics in a dense cornstarch suspension by coupling long rheological measurements under constant shear stresses to ultrasound imaging. We demonstrate that unsteadiness in DST results from localized bands that travel along the vorticity direction with a specific signature on the global shear rate response. These propagating events coexist with quiescent phases for stresses slightly above DST onset, resulting in intermittent, turbulent-like dynamics. Deeper into DST, events proliferate, leading to simpler, Gaussian dynamics. We interpret our results in terms of unstable vorticity bands as inferred from recent model and numerical simulations.
We study the fronts that appear when a shear-thickening suspension is submitted to a sudden driving force at a boundary. Using a quasi-one-dimensional experimental geometry, we extract the front shape and the propagation speed from the suspension flow field and map out their dependence on applied shear. We find that the relation between stress and velocity is quadratic, as is generally true for inertial effects in liquids, but with a pre-factor that can be much larger than the material density. We show that these experimental findings can be explained by an extension of the Wyart-Cates model, which was originally developed to describe steady-state shear-thickening. This is achieved by introducing a sole additional parameter: the characteristic strain scale that controls the crossover from start-up response to steady-state behavior. The theoretical framework we obtain unifies both transient and steady-state properties of shear-thickening materials.
We study the emergence of shear thickening in dense suspensions of non-Brownian particles. We combine local velocity and concentration measurements using Magnetic Resonance Imaging with macroscopic rheometry experiments. In steady state, we observe that the material is heterogeneous, and we find that that the local rheology presents a continuous transition at low shear rate from a viscous to a shear thickening, Bagnoldian, behavior with shear stresses proportional to the shear rate squared, as predicted by a scaling analysis. We show that the heterogeneity results from an unexpectedly fast migration of grains, which we attribute to the emergence of the Bagnoldian rheology. The migration process is observed to be accompanied by macroscopic transient discontinuous shear thickening, which is consequently not an intrinsic property of granular suspensions.
Dense, stabilized, frictional particulate suspensions in a viscous liquid undergo increasingly strong continuous shear thickening (CST) as the solid packing fraction, $phi$, 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 analyzed using measures of the topology of the network, including tools of persistent homology. We observe that at low stress the frictional interaction networks are predominantly quasi-linear along the compression axis. With an increase in stress, the force networks become more isotropic, forming loops in addition to chain-like structures. The topological measures of Betti numbers and total persistence provide a compact means of describing the mean properties of the frictional force networks and provide a key link between macroscopic rheology and the microscopic interactions. A total persistence measure describing the significance of loops in the force network structure, as a function of stress and packing fraction, shows behavior similar to that of relative viscosity and displays a scaling law near the jamming fraction for both dimensionalities simulated.
Log in to be able to interact and post comments
comments
Fetching comments
Sign in to be able to follow your search criteria
