Poster: Flow and failure in dense suspensions

Abstract

The injection of air at a controlled pressure into a confined 2 mm thick layer of a dense suspension (cornstarch/water mixture at 57.5 wt%) leads to the formation of branched fractures at a gauge pressure P = 10 kPa (top) and the formation of straight fractures at P = 20 kPa (bottom). The transition occurs when the characteristic width of the branched fractures becomes comparable to the thickness of the layer.