Mean-field model of layering instability in shearing suspensions

Concentrated suspensions may shear thin when the suspended particles form planar sheets that slide over one another with less friction than if the particles are randomly distributed. In a naive model the suspension is described by a mean effective viscosity and particles that collide with each other redistribute the mean density in the shearing direction. This leads to a diffusion equation for the particle density. If the viscosity in the unthinned state is a steeply increasing function of particle density the effective diffusion coefficient is negative and the diffusion equation, meaningful only on scales larger than the particle separation, is ill posed. This singularity corresponds to the formation of planar sheets of particles and defines a critical particle density for the onset of shear thinning.