Chaotic Dynamics and Rheology of Suspensions of Periodically Forced Slender Rods in Simple Shear Flow

Abstract

In an earlier paper, we had outlined a procedure for calculating the rheological parameters for periodically forced suspensions of slender rods in simple shear flow in the chaotic regime. In this work, we examine the consequences of the above procedure on the dynamics and rheology of similar suspensions starting off with uniform initial orientation distributions as well as aligned initial distributions. We provide numerical evidence for existence of riddled and intermingled basins of attractions in the system. We discuss the limitations of the diffusion equation approach in the chaotic regime. We also demonstrate that small changes in the preparation of aligned suspensions can lead to dramatically different rheological behaviour in some parametric regimes. In other parametric regimes differences in the dynamical behaviour do not translate into differences in the rheological behaviour of aligned suspensions.