Friction-controlled entropy-stability competition in granular systems
Soft Condensed Matter
2021-01-06 v4 Statistical Mechanics
Abstract
Using cyclic shear to drive a two dimensional granular system, we determine the structural characteristics for different inter-particle friction coefficients. These characteristics are the result of a competition between mechanical stability and entropy, with the latter's effect increasing with friction. We show that a parameter-free maximum-entropy argument alone predicts an exponential cell order distribution, with excellent agreement with the experimental observation. We show that friction only tunes the mean cell order and, consequently, the exponential decay rate and the packing fraction. We further show that cells, which can be very large in such systems, are short-lived, implying that our systems are liquid-like rather than glassy.
Cite
@article{arxiv.2007.14145,
title = {Friction-controlled entropy-stability competition in granular systems},
author = {Xulai Sun and Walter Kob and Raphael Blumenfeld and Hua Tong and Yujie Wang and Jie Zhang},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:2007.14145},
year = {2021}
}