Drop impact of shear thickening liquids

Abstract

The impact of drops of concentrated non-Brownian suspensions (cornstarch and polystyrene spheres) onto a solid surface is investigated experimentally. The spreading dynamics and maxi- mal deformation of the droplet of such shear thickening liquids are found to be markedly different from the impact of Newtonian drops. A particularly striking observation is that the maximal de- formation is independent of the drop velocity and that the deformation suddenly stops during the impact phase. Both observations are due to the shear-thickening rheology of the suspensions, as is theoretically explained from a balance between the kinetic energy and the viscously-dissipated en- ergy, from which we establish a scaling relation between drop maximal deformation and rheological parameters of concentrated suspensions.