Viscous to Inertial Transition in Dense Granular Suspension

Granular suspensions present a transition from a Newtonian rheology in the Stokes limit to a Bagnoldian rheology when inertia is increased. A custom rheometer that can be run in a pressure-or a volume-imposed mode is used to examine this transition in the dense regime close to jamming. By varying systematically the interstitial fluid, shear rate, and packing fraction in volume-imposed measurements, we show that the transition takes place at a Stokes number of 10 independent of the packing fraction. Using pressure -imposed rheometry, we investigate whether the inertial and viscous regimes can be unified as a function of a single dimensionless number based on stress additivity.

Automated summary

By conducting experiments, we found that the rheological properties of granular suspensions undergo a transition at a Stokes number of 10, independent of the packing fraction. Furthermore, we investigated whether a dimensionless number based on stress additivity could unify the inertial and viscous regimes.