The Jamming Transition in Granular Systems
Abstract
Recent simulations have predicted that near jamming for collections of spherical particles, there will be a discontinuous increase in the mean contact number, Z, at a critical volume fraction, phi_c. Above phi_c, Z and the pressure, P are predicted to increase as power laws in phi-phi_c. In experiments using photoelastic disks we corroborate a rapid increase in Z at phi_c and power-law behavior above phi_c for Z and P. Specifically we find power-law increase as a function of phi-phi_c for Z-Z_c with an exponent beta around 0.5, and for P with an exponent psi around 1.1. These exponents are in good agreement with simulations. We also find reasonable agreement with a recent mean-field theory for frictionless particles.
Cite
@article{arxiv.cond-mat/0610645,
title = {The Jamming Transition in Granular Systems},
author = {T. S. Majmudar and M. Sperl and S. Luding and R. P. Behringer},
journal= {arXiv preprint arXiv:cond-mat/0610645},
year = {2007}
}
Comments
4 pages, 4 figures, 2 pages supplement; minor changes and clarifications, 2 addtl. refs., accepted for publication in Phys. Rev. Lett