Dynamic jamming point for shear thickening suspensions

Condensed Matter journal club

Dynamic jamming point for shear thickening suspensions

  • Event time: 11:30am
  • Event date: 28th May 2010
  • Speaker: Gijs Katgert (Formerly School of Physics & Astronomy, University of Edinburgh)
  • Location: Room 2511,

Event details

Abstract

We report on rheometry measurements to characterize the critical behavior in two model shear thickening suspensions: cornstarch in water and glass spheres in oil. The slope of the shear thickening part of the viscosity curve is found to increase dramatically with packing fraction and diverge at a critical packing fraction ?c. The magnitude of the viscosity and the yield stress are also found to have scalings that diverge at ?c. We observe shear thickening as long as the yield stress is less than the stress at the viscosity maximum. Above this point the suspensions transition to purely shear thinning. Based on these data we present a dynamic jamming phase diagram for suspensions and show that a limiting case of shear thickening corresponds to a jammed state.
Phys. Rev. Lett 103 086001 (2009)

Authors

E. Brown and H. M. Jaeger

About Condensed Matter journal club

Given the diversity of research in the CM group, chosen topics vary widely. We tend to stick to high-impact journals - Nature, Science, PNAS and PRL have been popular - but this is not prescriptive..

Find out more about Condensed Matter journal club.