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Granular materials are involved in most industrial and environmental processes, as well as many civil engineering applications. Although significant advances have been made in understanding the statics and dynamics of cohesionless grains…
We study the impact of a projectile onto a bed of 3 mm grains immersed in an index-matched fluid. Specifically, we vary the amount of prestrain on the sample, strengthening the force chains within the system. We find this affects only the…
Molecular-level understanding of the interactions between the constituents of an atomic structure is essential for designing novel materials in various applications. This need goes beyond the basic knowledge of the number and types of…
Density Functional Theory (DFT) is one of the most widely used methods for "ab initio" calculations of the structure of atoms, molecules, crystals, surfaces, and their interactions. Unfortunately, the customary introduction to DFT is often…
We investigate the quasi-static mechanical response of soils under cyclic loading using a discrete model of randomly generated convex polygons. This response exhibits a sequence of regimes, each one characterized by a linear accumulation of…
FFT-based solvers introduced in the 1990s for the numerical homogenization of heterogeneous elastic materials have been extended to a wide range of physical properties. In parallel, alternative algorithms and modified discrete Green…
Abridged abstract: Inert interactions between randomly moving entities and spatial disorder play a crucial role in quantifying the diffusive properties of a system. These interactions affect only the movement of the entities, and examples…
Nuclear density functional theory (DFT) is the only microscopic, global approach to the structure of atomic nuclei. It is used in numerous applications, from determining the limits of stability to gaining a deep understanding of the…
We develop a theory of static friction by modeling the homogeneous surfaces of contact as being composed of a regular array of compressible elastic smooth microscopic inclines. Static friction is thought of as the resistance due to having…
We report on the onset of fluid entrainment when a contact line is forced to advance over a dry solid of arbitrary wettability. We show that entrainment occurs at a critical advancing speed beyond which the balance between capillary,…
Dense granular flows are well described by several continuum models, however, their internal dynamics remain elusive. This study explores the contact force distributions in simulated steady and homogenous shear flows. Results demonstrate…
The local time in an ensemble of particles measures the amount of time the particles spend in the vicinity of a given point in space. Here we study fluctuations of the empirical time average $R= T^{-1}\int_{0}^{T}\rho\left(x=0,t\right)\,dt$…
We discuss field theories appearing as a result of applying field transformations with derivatives (differential field transformations, DFT) to a known theory. We begin with some simple examples of DFTs to see the basic properties of the…
Friction is a ubiquitous phenomenon that greatly affects our everyday lives and is responsible for large amounts of energy loss in industrialised societies. Layered materials such as graphene have interesting frictional properties and are…
Let a lattice gas of constant density, described by the symmetric simple exclusion process, be brought in contact with a "target": a spherical absorber of radius $R$. Employing the macroscopic fluctuation theory (MFT), we evaluate the…
This paper gives a summary of basic concepts of density-functional theory (DFT) and its use in state-of-the-art computations of complex processes in condensed matter physics and materials science. In particular we discuss how microscopic…
In this note we discuss a paradigmatic example of interacting particles subject to non conservative external forces and to the action of thermostats consisting of external (finite) reservoirs of particles. We then consider a model of…
Gravity-driven flows of granular matter are involved in a wide variety of situations, ranging from industrial processes to geophysical phenomena, such as avalanches or landslides. These flows are characterized by the coexistence of solid…
Granular materials are characterized by large collections of discrete particles of sizes larger than one micron, where the particle-particle interactions are significantly more important than the particle-fluid interactions. These flows can…
Rheological properties of dense flows of hard particles are singular as one approaches the jamming threshold where flow ceases, both for aerial granular flows dominated by inertia, and for over-damped suspensions. Concomitantly, the…