Clouds of particles in a periodic shear flow

We have investigated the time evolution of a cloud of non-Brownian particles subjected to a periodic shear flow in an otherwise pure liquid at low Reynolds number. This experiment illustrates the irreversible nature of particulate systems submitted to a shear. When repeating the cycles of shear, we have found that clouds of particles progressively disperse in the flow direction until reaching a threshold critical volume fraction that depends upon the strain amplitude; this critical volume fraction coincides with measurements of the threshold for reversibility found from experiments on homogeneous suspensions in periodic shear. Two distinct patterns, including a “galaxy-like” shape, are observed for the evolution of the clouds and the transition between the patterns is identified using a simple scaling analysis. Movies are available with the online version of the paper.