Connecting shear jamming and discontinuous shear thickening

Shear stress can induce jamming at packing fractions below the static jamming packing fraction. Here we investigate shear-jamming transitions in a model of two-dimensional shear-jammed discs, observing a transient shear-jamming behavior corresponding to fragile states before the shear-jamming transition. The existence of these states below the onset of shear-jamming was first discovered by Bi et al. (Nature 480, 355–358 (2011)), and further investigation uncovered the related phenomenon of discontinuous shear thickening (Nature 532, 214-217 (2016)). We use molecular dynamics simulations to connect theory to experiment, revealing discontinuous shear thickening and transient shear-jamming to be intimately related. Using this knowledge, we obtain guidance for the design of an experimental system that can reproduce our result.