Arezoo Ardekani*

Rheology of concentrated suspension of spherical particles and fibers

 

Controlling the flow of concentrated particle suspensions is a crucial piece of an unresolved puzzle in many applications, e.g., biofuel production, solar cells, electronic cooling, fiber-reinforced thermoplastics. Unravelling the underlying physics and governing mechanisms that determine such materials' behavior is thus crucial. Understanding the flow behavior, quantifying the particle microstructure, and exploring ways to manipulate it in suspensions are essential to increase the efficiency and throughput of processes involving such dense suspensions of particles. Accurate predictions of rheology provide control over the flow of these materials. We developed experimentally validated and physics-based computational approach to study the flow of dense suspensions near jamming limits and quantitatively determined the role of inter-particle short range interactions on the rheology, the jamming fraction, and the microstructure of dense suspensions.