Network physics of shear jamming in dense suspensions

Dense suspensions exhibit a range of exotic rheological behavior from shear thickening to shear jamming under large deformation rates. While a more clear picture has emerged over the past few years on the mechanism behind these behavior, collective motion of particles and characteristics of the force and contact networks formed under large deformations is still poorly understood. These inter-particle force chains can be used as a proxy to describe the collective dynamic of the system and the routes for transmission of stresses from particle to global scales in dense suspensions. In this work, two, and three dimensional simulations of shear thickening dense suspensions, their frictional and frictionless force chains are studied under shear. We apply network science tools on the force and contact networks in the shear thickened and jammed states to reveal the fundamental differences between the continuous and discontinuous shear thickening behavior. We show that the network analysis of the inter-connectivity among the particulate network through their corresponding stresses can explain the the origins of shear jamming in dense suspensions.