Rheology of Suspended Particles in Viscoelastic Fluids Under Shear

Abstract eng:
The study of viscoelastic fluids with particulate fillers is of considerable interest due to the prevalence of such materials in manufacturing, including injection molding and 3D printing, where the robustness of the process depends on controlling the suspension rheology. However, a fundamental understanding of the bulk stress of viscoelastic suspensions is complicated by the nonlinearities of the suspending fluid properties, which present a challenge for deriving analytical results. We present 3D simulations of neutrally buoyant spheres freely suspended in a viscoelastic fluid described by the Giesekus model under shear flow. Single particle results are used to validate the dilute limit and explore the effect of high shear rates, showing that the bulk rheology becomes dominated by polymer stresses induced in the fluid by particle disturbances. We also present multi-particle simulations at low volume fractions with fully resolved hydrodynamics to show how particle-particle interactions affect the pair-probabilities and resulting bulk stresses.

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