Spreading of granular suspensions on a solid surface

Abstract

We examine the spreading of a suspension of non-Brownian spheres suspended in a Newtonian liquid on a solid substrate. We show that the spreading dynamics is well described by the classical Cox-Voinov law provided the value of the fluid viscosity that arises in the capillary number of the problem is adjusted to a value that depends on particle size and volume fraction in a nontrivial way. We demonstrate that this behavior is a signature of the ability of the particles to approach the contact line close enough to affect dissipation.