Normal stresses and microstructure in bounded sheared suspensions via Stokesian Dynamics simulations

Abstract

We report the normal stresses in a non-Brownian suspension in plane Couette flow determined from Stokesian Dynamics simulations. The presence of normal stresses that are linear in the shear rate in a viscometric flow indicates a non-Newtonian character of the suspension, which is otherwise Newtonian. While in itself of interest, this phenomenon is also important because it is believed that normal stresses determine the migration of particles in flows with inhomogeneous shear fields. We simulate plane Couette flow by placing a layer of clear fluid adjacent to one wall in the master cell, which is then replicated periodically. From a combination of the traceless hydrodynamic stresslet on the suspended particles, the stresslet due to (non-hydrodynamic) inter-particle forces, and the total normal force on the walls, we determine the hydrodynamic and inter-particle force contributions to the isotropic ‘particle pressure’ and the first normal stress difference. We determine the stresses for a range of the particle concentration and the Couette gap. The particle pressure and the first normal stress difference exhibit a monotonic increase with the mean particle volume fraction ϕ. The ratio of normal to shear stresses on the walls also increases with ϕ, substantiating the result of Nott & Brady (1994) that this condition is required for stability to concentration fluctuations. We also study the microstructure by extracting the pair distribution function from our simulations; our results are in agreement with previous studies showing anisotropy in the pair distribution, which is the cause of normal stresses.