Growing length and time scales in a suspension of athermal particles

Abstract

We simulate a relaxation process of non-Brownian particles in a sheared viscous medium; the system is subject to the small shear strain and then undergoes relaxation. We estimate the exponents with which the relaxation time and the correlation length diverge as the density approaches the jamming density from below. In particular, the dynamic critical exponent is estimated as 4.6(2). It is also found that shear stress undergoes power-law decay at the jamming density, which is reminiscent of critical slowing down. © 2009 The American Physical Society.