Related papers: Arches and contact forces in a granular pile
We present experimental results about the stability of arches against external vibrations. Two dimensional strings of mutually stabilizing grains are geometrically analyzed and subsequently submitted to a periodic forcing at fixed frequency…
We characterize the force state of shear-loaded granular matter by relating the macroscopic stress to statistical properties of the force network. The purely repulsive nature of the interaction between grains naturally provides an upper…
The transmission of stress through a marginally stable granular pile in two dimensions is exactly formulated in terms of a vector field of loop forces, and thence in terms of a single scalar potential. The loop force formulation leads to a…
We study a scalar lattice model for inter-grain forces in static, non-cohesive, granular materials, obtaining two primary results. (i) The applied stress as a function of overall strain shows a power law dependence with a nontrivial…
When a granular material composed of elongated grains is sheared in a split-bottom shear cell, a pressure difference develops within the material. This pressure difference depends on the interparticle friction ($\mu$), which affects shear…
A scenario for yielding of granular matter is presented by considering the ensemble of force networks for a given contact network and applied shear stress $\tau$. As $\tau$ is increased, the probability distribution of contact forces…
We present experimental results on the shape of arches that block the outlet of a two dimensional silo. For a range of outlet sizes, we measure some properties of the arches such as the number of particles involved, the span, the aspect…
The structure and stresses of static granular packs in cylindrical containers are studied using large-scale discrete element molecular dynamics simulations in three dimensions. We generate packings by both pouring and sedimentation and…
We investigate the structure and distribution of arches formed by spherical, hard particles shaken in an external field after they come to rest. Arches (or bridges) are formed during a computer-simulated, non-sequential deposition of the…
We report numerical results of effective attractive forces on the packing properties of two-dimensional elongated grains. In deposits of non-cohesive rods in 2D, the topology of the packing is mainly dominated by the formation of ordered…
We present a new approach to the modelling of stress propagation in static granular media, focussing on the conical sandpile constructed from a point source. We view the medium as consisting of cohesionless hard particles held up by static…
The properties of small clusters depend dramatically on the interactions between their constituent particles. However, it remains challenging to design and tune the interactions between macroscopic particles, such as in a granular material.…
The evolution of the internal granular structure in shear-arrested and shear-flowing states of granular materials is characterized using fabric tensors as descriptors of the internal contact and force networks. When a dilute system of…
We propose an alternative approach to count the microscopic static configurations of granular packs under gravity by considering arches. This strategy simplifies the problem of filtering out configurations that are not mechanically stable,…
The shear strength of cohesionless granular materials is generally attributed to the compactness or anisotropy of their microstructure. An open issue is how such compact or anisotropic microstructures, and thus the shear strength, depend on…
In dense, static, polydisperse granular media under isotropic pressure, the probability density and the correlations of particle-wall contact forces are studied. Furthermore, the probability density functions of the populations of pressures…
The transmission of forces through a disordered granular system is studied by means of a geometrical-topological approach that reduces the granular packing into a set of layers. This layered structure constitutes the skeleton through which…
We examine the network of forces to be expected in a static assembly of hard, frictionless spherical beads of random sizes, such as a colloidal glass. Such an assembly is minimally connected: the ratio of constraint equations to contact…
The strength of granular materials is highly dependent on grain connectivity (fabric), force transmission, and frictional mobilization at the particle scale. Furthermore, these bulk properties are strongly dependent on the geometry and…
For packings of hard but not perfectly rigid particles, the length scales that govern the packing geometry and the contact forces are well separated. This separation of length scales is explored in the force network ensemble, where one…