Shear thickening in dense suspensions driven by particle interlocking

The processing of dense suspensions is a crucial step in many industries including mining; the production ceramics; and manufacture pharmaceuticals. It widely reported that these exhibit nonlinear behaviours such as shear thinning thickening, with particle surface contacts recently being accepted primary culprit latter. In light this, modelling community have started to explore role tribology, predominantly by incorporating Coulombic friction models borrowed from field dry granular matter. Full details interactions between surfaces remain unclear, however, it suggested physical interlocking asperities may be key. Here, we use particle-based simulations explicitly effect on rheology micron-sized solids Newtonian fluid. Our simplified model recovers thinning, thickening jamming phenomena commonly seen experiments.