Shear-Induced Order in Suspensions of Hard Spheres

Abstract

Suspensions in a liquid of "nearly hard" colloidal spheres were subjected to steady and oscillatory shear flows and studied by light scattering. Samples which exhibit a fluidlike ordering of the particles in equilibrium were induced to a solidlike order by oscillatory shear of strain amplitude \ensuremath{\simeq}1. In steady shear flow the suspensions showed evidence of "string" structures similar to but less complete than those found in computer simulations of simple liquids.