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Dense suspensions of particles in viscous liquid often demonstrate the striking phenomenon of abrupt shear thickening, where their viscosity increases strongly with increase of the imposed stress or shear rate. In this work, discrete-particle simulations accounting for short-range hydrodynamic, repulsive, and contact forces are performed to simulate flow of shear thickening bidisperse suspensions, with the packing parameters of large-to-small particle radius ratio δ = 3 and large particle fraction ζ = 0.15, 0.50, and 0.85. The simulations are carried out for volume fractions 0.54 ≤ ϕ ≤ 0.60 and a wide range of shear stresses. The repulsive forces, of magnitude F R , model the effects of surface charge and electric double-layer overlap, and result in shear thinning at small stress, with shear thickening beginning at stresses σ ∼ F R a −2 . A crossover scaling analysis used to describe systems with more than one thermodynamic critical point has recently been shown to successfully describe the experimentally-observed shear thickening behavior in suspensions. The scaling theory is tested here on simulated shear thickening data of the bidisperse mixtures, and also on nearly monodisperse suspensions with δ = 1.4 and ζ = 0.50. Presenting the viscosity in terms of a universal crossover scaling function between the frictionless and frictional maximum packing fractions collapses the viscosity for most of the suspensions studied. Two scaling regimes having different exponents are observed. The scaling analysis shows that the second normal stress difference N 2 and the particle pressure Π also collapse on their respective curves, with the latter featuring a different exponent from the viscosity and normal stress difference. The influence of the fraction of frictional contacts, one of the parameters of the scaling analysis, and its dependence on the packing parameters are also presented.
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Observation of transition cascades in sheared liquid crystalline polymers
We report on the shear rheology of liquid crystalline solutions composed of charged, rodlike polymers that form supramolecular assemblies dispersed in water. Under steady shear, we observe shear thickening behavior, followed by a hesitation in the viscosity accompanied by an extremely narrow range of negative first normal stress difference. The Peclet number (Pe, shear rate normalized by rod rotational diffusivity) for the onset of shear thickening is in agreement with previous, high-resolution numerical simulations of the Doi–Edwards–Hess kinetic theory. We interrogate these dynamic responses through shear step-down experiments, revealing a complex evolution of transient responses. Detailed analysis of the stress transients provides compelling evidence that the principal axis of the rod orientational distribution, the nematic director, undergoes a cascade of transitions and coexistence of periodic states known as kayaking, tumbling, and wagging, before transitioning to steady flow alignment above a critical shear rate.
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- PAR ID:
- 10249215
- Date Published:
- Journal Name:
- Soft Matter
- Volume:
- 16
- Issue:
- 16
- ISSN:
- 1744-683X
- Page Range / eLocation ID:
- 3891 to 3901
- Format(s):
- Medium: X
- Sponsoring Org:
- National Science Foundation
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- Free Publicly Accessible Full Text
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Accepted Manuscript1.0
- Journal Article:
- https://doi.org/10.1039/D0SM00275E
