Rheology of Weakly Flocculated Suspensions: Simulation of Agglomerates under Shear

✍ Scribed by John R. Melrose; David M. Heyes

• Publisher: Elsevier Science
• Year: 1993
• Tongue: English
• Weight: 449 KB
• Volume: 157
• Category: Article
• ISSN: 0021-9797
• DOI: 10.1006/jcis.1993.1180

✦ Synopsis

An idealized Brownian dynamics algorithm is used to simulate sheared suspensions of particles in (3 \mathrm{D}) at (30 %) volume fraction and with attractive interactions due to depletion effects. At rest, the system considered lies within the regime of phase separation and forms a floc network. Considering just one strength of depletion interaction, networks of (N=108) and (N=500) particles were sheared at shear rates increasing in a stepwise fashion. The shear and attractive forces interplay to form the floc network into dense agglomerates. At low shear rate the agglomerates are deformable bodies, at higher shear rates the agglomerates become unstable and the system undergoes a morphological transformation to layers normal to the vorticity axis. This transformation is found to be similar for the two system sizes. (9) 1993 Academic Press, Inc.