Shear Thickening in Concentrated Soft Sphere Colloidal Suspensions: A Shear Induced Phase Transition

Figure 5

Schematically displayed is the equilibrium phase diagram of electrically stabilized monodisperse colloidal suspensions. The model suggests that shear thickening in soft sphere suspensions depends on the position in the phase diagram. The expected viscosity is displayed for two different paths as a function of the shear rate (logarithmic scaling). The dashed line in the phase diagram indicates a path with varying volume fraction and the dotted line a path with changing the Debye screening parameter . For comparison with empirical data, see, for example, [40, 41].