2019/05/31 by Prateek Sehgal, Meera Ramaswamy, Itai Cohen +1
Chemistry · Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Chemistry #Colloid #Composite material #Dilatant #Electrowetting and Microfluidic Technologies #Materials science #Mechanics #Microfluidic and Bio-sensing Technologies #Microfluidic and Capillary Electrophoresis Applications #Physics #Piezoelectricity #Shear (geology) #Shear flow #Suspension (topology) #Thickening #Viscosity #cond-mat.soft #physics.flu-dyn
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.123.128001
published as Phys. Rev. Lett. 123, 128001 (2019) · 21 pages, 14 figures
openalex publication_date 2019/09/17 · arxiv created 2019/09/18 · arxiv updated 2019/09/19 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
Colloidal suspensions in industrial processes often exhibit shear thickening that is difficult to control actively. Here, we use piezoelectric transducers to apply acoustic perturbations to dynamically tune the suspension viscosity in the shear-thickening regime. We attribute the mechanism of dethickening to the disruption of shear-induced force chains via perturbations that are large relative to the particle roughness scale. The ease with which this technique can be adapted to various flow geometries makes it a powerful tool for actively controlling suspension flow properties and investigating system dynamics.