Surface-wave instability without inertia in shear-thickening suspensions

Abstract

The way interactions at the microscopic scale influence emerging flow properties in complex fluids at the macroscopic scale is one of the core problems in soft matter physics. This work provides experimental evidence together with a theoretical explanation for ‘Oobleck waves’, an instability arising from the coupling between the flow free surface and the non-monotonic rheological laws of shear-thickening suspensions.