Rheological modelling and simulation of shear thickening in a bidisperse suspension

Abstract eng:
Concentrated suspensions of solid particles in liquid, such as pastes, exhibit many forms of nonlinear flow behaviour. Shear thickening, in which the suspension viscosity increases with applied stress, is of particular interest to engineers across disciplines as it can arise under minor variations in composition but leads to, for example, pump failure and extrusion blockages. We recently demonstrated that the increase in viscosity can be attributed to direct particle-particle contacts, which are frictional in nature. Furthermore, experiments have shown that the critical stress above which thickening occurs is intimately related to the particle size, with larger particles more likely to thicken than smaller ones. In the present work, we explore the implications of these findings for ‘real’ suspensions, which might be composed of particles spanning orders of magnitude in size, and propose how particle size distributions of future suspensions might be tuned to achieve or avoid certain shear thickening behaviour.

• Export as: BibTeX | MARC | MARCXML | DC | EndNote | NLM | RefWorks
• Add to your basket