Criticality of the viscous to inertial transition near jamming in non-Brownian suspensions

Abstract

In this work, we use a Discrete Element Method (DEM) to explore the viscous to inertial shear thickening transition of dense frictionless non-Brownian suspensions close to jamming. This transition is characterized by a change in the steady state rheology of a suspension with increasing shear rate ($\dot{\gamma}$), from a regime of constant viscosity at low shear rates to a regime where the viscosity varies linearly with the shear rate. Through our numerical simulations, we show that the characteristic shear rate associated with this transition depends sensitively on the volume fraction ($\phi$) of the suspension and that it goes to zero as we approach the jamming volume fraction ($\phi_m$) for the system. By attributing the criticality of this transition to a diverging length scale of the microstructure as $\phi \rightarrow \phi_m$, we use a scaling framework to achieve a collapse of the rheological data associated with the viscous to inertial transition. A series of tests conducted on the system size dependence of the rheological results is used to show the existence of this microstructural length-scale that diverges as the suspension approaches jamming and its role in triggering the viscous to inertial transition.