No Arabic abstract
There was an error in data reduction, resulting in incorrect values for the normal stress differences $N_1$ and $N_2$ shown in Figs. 7-10, and the corrected figures are shown here. In particular, the algebraic sign of $N_1$ is changed, as are the relative magnitudes of $N_1$ and $N_2$. The negative values of $N_1$ for these non-shear-thickening suspensions are larger in magnitude than those reported by other workers, but both $N_1$ and $N_2$ are in general agreement with the accelerated Stokesian Dynamics calculations of Sierou and Brady [1].
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 by a simulation including this physical ingredient along with viscous lubrication. In the present article, we thoroughly investigate the effect of friction and express it in the framework of the jamming transition. The viscosity divergence at the jamming transition has been a well known phenomenon in suspension rheology, as reflected in many empirical laws for the viscosity. Friction can affect this divergence, and in particular the jamming packing fraction is reduced if particles are frictional. Within the physical description proposed here, shear thickening is a direct consequence of this effect: as the shear rate increases, friction is increasingly incorporated as more contacts form, leading to a transition from a mostly frictionless to a mostly frictional rheology. This result is significant because it shifts the emphasis from lubrication hydrodynamics and detailed microscopic interactions to geometry and steric constraints close to the jamming transition.
A consensus is emerging that discontinuous shear thickening (DST) in dense suspensions marks a transition from a flow state where particles remain well separated by lubrication layers, to one dominated by frictional contacts. We show here that reasonable assumptions about contact proliferation predict two distinct types of DST in the absence of inertia. The first occurs at densities above the jamming point of frictional particles; here the thickened state is completely jammed and (unless particles deform) cannot flow without inhomogeneity or fracture. The second regime shows strain- rate hysteresis and arises at somewhat lower densities where the thickened phase flows smoothly. DST is predicted to arise when finite-range repulsions defer contact formation until a characteristic stress level is exceeded.
The presence and the microscopic origin of normal stress differences in dense suspensions under simple shear flows are investigated by means of inertialess particle dynamics simulations, taking into account hydrodynamic lubrication and frictional contact forces. The synergic action of hydrodynamic and contact forces between the suspended particles is found to be the origin of negative contributions to the first normal stress difference $N_1$, whereas positive values of $N_1$ observed at higher volume fractions near jamming are due to effects that cannot be accounted for in the hard-sphere limit. Furthermore, we found that the stress anisotropy induced by the planarity of the simple shear flow vanishes as the volume fraction approaches the jamming point for frictionless particles, while it remains finite for the case of frictional particles.
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 $eta_0$. 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 $eta_0$ increases. To clarify the contribution from viscous interactions to the rheology, we systematically measure stress fluctuations in various flow states. Reduction of stress fluctuations with $eta_0$ indicates that a strong lubrication layer greatly inhibits force correlations among particles. Measuring stress fluctuations in the strong shear thickening regime, we observe a crossover from asymmetric Gamma to symmetric Gaussian distributions and associated with it a decrease of lateral (radial) correlation length $xi$ with increasing shear rate.
We propose a simple model, supported by contact-dynamics simulations as well as rheology and friction measurements, that links the transition from continuous to discontinuous shear-thickening in dense granular pastes to distinct lubrication regimes in the particle contacts. We identify a local Sommerfeld number that determines the transition from Newtonian to shear-thickening flows, and then show that the suspensions volume fraction and the boundary lubrication friction coefficient control the nature of the shear-thickening transition, both in simulations and experiments.