Tunable shear thickening in active non-Brownian suspensions
Fuente:
arXiv
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| Autori principali: | , |
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| Natura: | Preprint |
| Pubblicazione: |
2026
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| _version_ | 1866911503165161472 |
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| author | Bhowmik, Bhanu Prasad Ness, Christopher |
| author_facet | Bhowmik, Bhanu Prasad Ness, Christopher |
| contents | We study tunable shear thickening in active suspensions of non-Brownian, repulsive, frictional grains using particle-based simulation, finding that activity augments the rheology beyond the friction-mediated shear thickening paradigm. Specifically, increasing particle self-propulsion drives a viscosity-reducing `dethickening' of the system at large stress, where the material would otherwise be in a thickened, highly viscous state. Self-propulsion introduces additional isotropic dynamics to the particles, which compete with the flow-driven formation of frictional contacts. The degree of dethickening can thus be tuned by varying a suitably-defined dimensionless active stress that quantifies this competition. Recognising the parallels between self-propulsion and other contemporary routes to dethickening, we demonstrate that our data obey a recently proposed scaling framework, supporting a universal description of the tunable rheology of dense suspensions. |
| format | Preprint |
| id |
arxiv_https___arxiv_org_abs_2603_09620 |
| institution | arXiv |
| publishDate | 2026 |
| record_format | arxiv |
| spellingShingle | Tunable shear thickening in active non-Brownian suspensions Bhowmik, Bhanu Prasad Ness, Christopher Soft Condensed Matter Statistical Mechanics We study tunable shear thickening in active suspensions of non-Brownian, repulsive, frictional grains using particle-based simulation, finding that activity augments the rheology beyond the friction-mediated shear thickening paradigm. Specifically, increasing particle self-propulsion drives a viscosity-reducing `dethickening' of the system at large stress, where the material would otherwise be in a thickened, highly viscous state. Self-propulsion introduces additional isotropic dynamics to the particles, which compete with the flow-driven formation of frictional contacts. The degree of dethickening can thus be tuned by varying a suitably-defined dimensionless active stress that quantifies this competition. Recognising the parallels between self-propulsion and other contemporary routes to dethickening, we demonstrate that our data obey a recently proposed scaling framework, supporting a universal description of the tunable rheology of dense suspensions. |
| title | Tunable shear thickening in active non-Brownian suspensions |
| topic | Soft Condensed Matter Statistical Mechanics |
| url | https://arxiv.org/abs/2603.09620 |