Irreversibility and chaos: Role of lubrication interactions in sheared suspensions

We investigate non-Brownian particles suspended in a periodic shear-flow using simulations. Following Metzger and Butler [Phys. Rev. E 82, 051406 (2010)], we show that the chaotic dynamics arising from lubrication interactions are too weak to generate an observable particle dispersion. The irreversibility observed in periodic flow is dominated by contact interactions. Nonetheless, we show that lubrication interactions must be included in the calculation to obtain results that agree with experiments.