Towards a Unified Description of the Rheology of Hard-Particle Suspensions.
The rheology of suspensions of Brownian, or colloidal, particles (diameter d≲1  μm) differs markedly from that of larger grains (d≳50  μm). Each of these two regimes has been separately studied, but the flow of suspensions with intermediate particle sizes (1  μm≲d≲50  μm), which occur ubiquitously in applications, remains poorly understood. By measuring the rheology of suspensions of hard spheres with a wide range of sizes, we show experimentally that shear thickening drives the transition from colloidal to granular flow across the intermediate size regime. This insight makes possible a unified description of the (noninertial) rheology of hard spheres over the full size spectrum. Moreover, we are able to test a new theory of friction-induced shear thickening, showing that our data can be well fitted using expressions derived from it.
SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Peter Guthrie Tait Road, Edinburgh EH9 3FD, United Kingdom.
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Guy
SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Peter Guthrie Tait Road, Edinburgh EH9 3FD, United Kingdom.
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Hermes
SUPA, School of Physics and Astronomy, The University of Edinburgh, King's Buildings, Peter Guthrie Tait Road, Edinburgh EH9 3FD, United Kingdom.
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Poon