title: Rheology of Confined Non-Brownian Suspensions.
abstract: We study the rheology of confined suspensions of neutrally buoyant rigid monodisperse spheres in plane-Couette flow using direct numerical simulations. We find that if the width of the channel is a (small) integer multiple of the sphere diameter, the spheres self-organize into two-dimensional layers that slide on each other and the effective viscosity of the suspension is significantly reduced. Each two-dimensional layer is found to be structurally liquidlike but its dynamics is frozen in time.
authors.affiliation: Linné Flow Centre and SeRC, KTH Mechanics, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Walter
authors.initials: W
authors.lastname: Fornari
authors.affiliation: Linné Flow Centre and SeRC, KTH Mechanics, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Luca
authors.initials: L
authors.lastname: Brandt
authors.affiliation: Institute of Mathematical Sciences, CIT Campus, Taramani, Chennai 600113, India.
authors.forename: Pinaki
authors.initials: P
authors.lastname: Chaudhuri
authors.affiliation: Linné Flow Centre and SeRC, KTH Mechanics, SE-100 44 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Cyan Umbert
authors.initials: CU
authors.lastname: Lopez
authors.affiliation: Nordita, KTH Royal Institute of Technology and Stockholm University, Roslagstullsbacken 23, 10691 Stockholm, Sweden.
authors.forename: Dhrubaditya
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Mitra
authors.affiliation: Department of Industrial Engineering, University of Padova, Via Venezia 1, 35131 Padova, Italy.
authors.forename: Francesco
authors.initials: F
authors.lastname: Picano