Depletion Forces in Athermally Sheared Mixtures of Frictionless Disks and Rods in Two Dimensions

Abstract

We carry out numerical simulations to study uniformly sheared two-dimensional suspensions consisting of a of mixture of athermal, frictionless, circular disks and elongated rods. We find that shear induced fluctuations lead to depletion forces that cause rods to group in parallel oriented clusters. As the fraction of rods increases, this clustering increases, leading to an increase in the average rate of rotation of the rods, and a decrease in the magnitude of their nematic ordering.