A constitutive model for simple shear of dense frictional suspensions

Discrete particle simulations are used to study the shear rheology of dense, stabilized, frictional particulate suspensions in a viscous liquid, toward development of a constitutive model for steady shear flows at arbitrary stress. These suspensions undergo increasingly strong continuous shear thickening (CST) as solid volume fraction $phi$ increases above a critical volume fraction, and discontinuous shear thickening (DST) is observed for a range of $phi$. When studied at controlled stress, the DST behavior is associated with non-monotonic flow curves of the steady-state stress as a function of shear rate. Recent studies have related shear thickening to a transition between mostly lubricated to predominantly frictional contacts with the increase in stress. In this study, the behavior is simulated over a wide range of the dimensionless parameters $(phi,tilde{sigma}$, and $mu)$, with $tilde{sigma} = sigma/sigma_0$ the dimensionless shear stress and $mu$ the coefficient of interparticle friction: the dimensional stress is $sigma$, and $sigma_0 propto F_0/ a^2$, where $F_0$ is the magnitude of repulsive force at contact and $a$ is the particle radius. The data have been used to populate the model of the lubricated-to-frictional rheology of Wyart and Cates [Phys. Rev. Lett.{bf 112}, 098302 (2014)], which is based on the concept of two viscosity divergences or textquotedblleft jammingtextquotedblright points at volume fraction $phi_{rm J}^0 = phi_{rm rcp}$ (random close packing) for the low-stress lubricated state, and at $phi_{rm J} (mu) < phi_{rm J}^0$ for any nonzero $mu$ in the frictional state; a generalization provides the normal stress response as well as the shear stress. A flow state map of this material is developed based on the simulation results.