Mean-field microrheology of a very soft colloidal suspension: inertia induces shear-thickening

Abstract

Colloidal suspensions have a rich rheology and can exhibit shear-thinning as well as shear-thickening. Numerical simulations recently suggested that shear-thickening may be attributed to the inertia of the colloids, besides the hydrodynamic interactions between them. Here, we consider the ideal limit of a dense bath of soft colloids following an underdamped Langevin dynamics. We use a mean-field equation for the colloidal density to get an analytical expression of the drag force felt by a probe pulled at constant velocity through the suspension. Our results show that inertia can indeed induce shear-thickening by allowing density waves to propagate through the suspension.

13 pages, 6 figures

References in corpus (6)

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• Macroscopic Discontinuous Shear Thickening vs Local Shear Jamming in Cornstarch
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