Arrest stress of uniformly sheared wet granular matter

We conduct extensive independent numerical experiments considering frictionless disks without internal degrees of freedom (rotation, etc.) in two dimensions. We report here that for a large range of the packing fractions below random-close packing, all components of the stress tensor of wet granular materials remain finite in the limit of zero shear rate. This is direct evidence for a fluid-to-solid arrest transition. The offset value of the shear stress characterizes plastic deformation of the arrested state which corresponds to dynamic yield stress of the system. Based on an analytical line of argument, we propose that the mean number of capillary bridges per particle, ν, follows a nontrivial dependence on the packing fraction, ϕ, and the capillary energy, ɛ. Most noticeably, we show that ν is a generic and universal quantity which does not depend on the driving protocol. Using this universal quantity, we calculate the arrest stress, σ(a), analytically based on a balance of the energy injection rate due to the external force driving the flow and the dissipation rate accounting for the rupture of capillary bridges. The resulting prediction of σ(a) is a nonlinear function of the packing fraction, ϕ, and the capillary energy, ɛ. This formula provides an excellent, parameter-free prediction of the numerical data. Corrections to the theory for small and large packing fractions are connected to the emergence of shear bands and of contributions to the stress from repulsive particle interactions, respectively.