Taking control of flowing dense suspensions

Abstract. Dense suspensions of solid particles in a Newtonian liquid are widespread in industry, consumer goods and nature. In all these contexts, it is important to understand their rheology — i.e. their behaviour under flow. Developments during the last 5 years have led to a new appreciation of the role that direct particle-particle contacts play in setting the viscosity of such suspensions, and especially in determining flowrate-dependent effects such as shear thickening. In this talk I will review (i) the experimental and computational techniques that led to this new understanding; (ii) approaches to constitutive modelling of dense suspensions made possible by these new insights; (iii) potential formulation and processing techniques that take advantage of particle-particle contacts to control suspension flow in a desirable way.