Drop impact of shear thickening liquids

The impact of drops of concentrated non-Brownian suspensions (cornstarch and polystyrene spheres) onto a solid surface is investigated experimentally. The spreading dynamics and maximal deformation of the droplet of such shear thickening liquids are found to be markedly different from the impact of Newtonian drops. A particularly striking observation is that the maximal deformation is independent of the drop velocity and that the deformation suddenly stops during the impact phase. Both observations are due to the shear thickening rheology of the suspensions, as is explained theoretically from a balance between the kinetic energy and the viscously dissipated energy, from which we establish a scaling relation between the maximal deformation of the drop and rheological parameters of concentrated suspensions.