Kinetic theory of discontinuous shear thickening of a moderately dense inertial suspension of frictionless soft particles

TL;DR

This paper presents a kinetic theory explaining discontinuous shear thickening in moderately dense inertial suspensions of frictionless soft particles, aligning well with simulation results without fitting parameters.

Contribution

It introduces a kinetic theory for DST in inertial suspensions of frictionless soft particles, capturing the transition without adjustable parameters.

Findings

Kinetic theory accurately reproduces simulation results.

DST occurs as an ignited-quenched transition.

Theory applies across a wide volume fraction range.

Abstract

We demonstrate that a discontinuous shear thickening (DST) can take place even in a moderately dense inertial suspension consisting of frictionless soft particles. This DST can be regarded as an ignited-quenched transition in the inertial suspension. An approximate kinetic theory well recovers the results of the Langevin simulation in the wide range of the volume fraction without any fitting parameters.