  A remarkable property of dense suspensions is that they can transform from
liquid-like at rest to solid-like under sudden impact. Previous work showed
that this impact-induced solidification involves rapidly moving jamming fronts;
however, details of this process have remained unresolved. Here we use
high-speed ultrasound imaging to probe non-invasively how the interior of a
dense suspension responds to impact. Measuring the speed of sound we
demonstrate that the solidification proceeds without a detectable increase in
packing fraction, and imaging the evolving flow field we find that the shear
intensity is maximized right at the jamming front. Taken together, this
provides direct experimental evidence for jamming by shear, rather than
densification, as driving the transformation to solid-like behavior. Based on
these findings we propose a new model to explain the anisotropy in the
propagation speed of the fronts and delineate the onset conditions for dynamic
shear jamming in suspensions.
