Shear thickening of dense suspensions due to energy dissipation in lubrication layers between particles

Abstract

This paper deals with a theoretical study of the shear thickening effects in concentrated suspensions of non-Brownian particles. Our analysis shows that an increase of the shear rate of the suspension flow leads to a decrease of the mean thickness of the gaps between the nearest particles in dense suspensions. In turn, this leads to the growth of energy dissipation in these gaps, which means an increase of the suspension effective viscosity with the shear rate. © 2013 American Physical Society.