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Impact-induced hardening in dense frictional suspensions

We numerically study the impact-induced hardening in dense suspensions. We employ the lattice Boltzmann method and perform simulations of dense suspensions under impacts, which incorporate the contact between suspended particles with the free surface of the suspension. Our simulation for a free-falling impactor on a dense suspension reproduces experimental results, where rebound takes place for frictional particles at high-speed impact and high volume fraction shortly after the impact before subsequently sinking. We found that the shear stress of the suspension is not affected by the impact, which clearly distinguishes the impact-induced hardening from the discontinuous shear thickening. Instead, we found the existence of a localized region with distinctively high value of normal stress corresponding to the dynamically jammed region. Our simulation indicates that the frictional interaction between suspended particles is important for the impact-induced hardening to maintain the dynamically jammed region. Furthermore, persistent homology analysis successfully elucidates the topological structure of force chains.