Shear thickening, frictionless and frictional rheologies in non-Brownian suspensions

Particles suspended in a Newtonian fluid raise the viscosity and also generally give rise to a shear-rate dependent rheology. In particular, pronounced shear thickening may be observed at large solid volume fractions. In a recent article [R. Seto et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 111, 218301 (2013)], we have considered the minimum set of components to reproduce the experimentally observed shear thickening behavior, including discontinuous shear thickening. We have found frictional contact forces to be essential and were able to reproduce the experimental behavior by a simulation including this physical ingredient along with viscous lubrication. In the present article, we thoroughly investigate the effect of friction…