Original title: Critical scaling and soft granular rheology of frictionless non-Brownian suspensions across jamming
Rohan Vernekar, Romain Mari, Bruno Chareyre, Hugues Bodiguel · September 2026
When tiny particles pack tightly in a liquid, they can suddenly clog up and stop flowing. This switch is called jamming. Scientists wanted to see how flowing mixtures of squishy, frictionless, spherical particles behave right around this transition point. They created 3D computer simulations that sheared these particle mixtures at set speeds and packing densities. They tested conditions very close to the clogging point and across much wider ranges. The team confirmed that this shear-driven jammingJamming caused by stirring or shearing rather than just packing. works like a second-order critical transition, meaning the shift happens continuously, but it requires strong corrections for shearing effects. By creating maps of flow regimes and using soft granular rules, they successfully predicted how these mixtures flow across almost the entire range of densities and speeds.
Imagine a crowded hallway where people are trying to walk through. If too many push at once, they get stuck and can't move smoothly. In this paper, the mixture of particles is like the people, and stirring it is like the movement in the hallway; the jamming point is when it becomes too crowded to flow.
This research helps engineers predict when slurries or granular mixtures will clog or flow, improving processes in industries like construction and food production where material handling under stress is critical.
The work is based on computer simulations, not physical experiments, and assumes idealized particles that are frictionless, non-Brownian, and spherical, which may not capture all real-world complexities.
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Critical scaling and soft granular rheology of frictionless non-Brownian suspensions across jamming — Rohan Vernekar, Romain Mari, Bruno Chareyre et al.
Abstract licence: CC0
Explanation generated by Synthesis from the abstract — it is not the original paper. This is a preprint, so it hasn't necessarily been peer reviewed.