English

Internal avalanches in models of granular media

Statistical Mechanics 2007-05-23 v1

Abstract

We study the phenomenon of internal avalanching within the context of recently introduced lattice models of granular media. The avalanche is produced by pulling out a grain at the base of the packing and studying how many grains have to rearrange before the packing is once more stable. We find that the avalanches are long-ranged, decaying as a power-law. We study the distriution of avalanches as a function of the density of the packing and find that the avalanche distribution is a very sensitive structural probe of the system.

Keywords

Cite

@article{arxiv.cond-mat/9812075,
  title  = {Internal avalanches in models of granular media},
  author = {S. Krishnamurthy and H. J. Herrmann and V. Loreto and M. Nicodemi and S. Roux},
  journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/9812075},
  year   = {2007}
}

Comments

12 pages including 9 eps figures, LaTeX. To appear in Fractals