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Universal scaling of shear thickening transitions

Cornell Affiliated Author(s)

Author

M. Ramaswamy
I. Griniasty
D.B. Liarte
A. Shetty
E. Katifori
E. Del Gado
J.P. Sethna
B. Chakraborty
I. Cohen

Abstract

Nearly, all dense suspensions undergo dramatic and abrupt thickening transitions in their flow behavior when sheared at high stresses. Such transitions occur when the dominant interactions between the suspended particles shift from hydrodynamic to frictional. Here, we interpret abrupt shear thickening as a precursor to a rigidity transition and give a complete theory of the viscosity in terms of a universal crossover scaling function from the frictionless jamming point to a rigidity transition associated with friction, anisotropy, and shear. Strikingly, we find experimentally that for two different systems—cornstarch in glycerol and silica spheres in glycerol—the viscosity can be collapsed onto a single universal curve over a wide range of stresses and volume fractions. The collapse reveals two separate scaling regimes due to a crossover between frictionless isotropic jamming and frictional shear jamming, with different critical exponents. The material-specific behavior due to the microscale particle interactions is incorporated into a scaling variable governing the proximity to shear jamming, that depends on both stress and volume fraction. This reformulation opens the door to importing the vast theoretical machinery developed to understand equilibrium critical phenomena to elucidate fundamental physical aspects of the shear thickening transition. © 2023 The Society of Rheology.

Date Published

Journal

Journal of Rheology

Volume

67

Issue

6

Number of Pages

1189-1197,

ISBN Number

01486055 (ISSN)

URL

https://www.scopus.com/inward/record.uri?eid=2-s2.0-85174293070&doi=10.1122%2f8.0000697&partnerID=40&md5=a8843f9e86e996a1f9481e91be62bd6a

DOI

10.1122/8.0000697

Alternate Journal

J Rheol

Group (Lab)

Itai Cohen Group
James Sethna Group

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