Related papers: Rate-dependent drag instability in granular materi…
A large number (~10,000) of uniform stainless steel balls comprising less than one layer coverage on a vertically shaken plate provides a rich system for the study of excited granular media. Viewed from above, the horizontal motion in the…
Granular packings of hard discs are investigated by means of contact dynamics which is an appropriate technique to explore the allowed force-realizations in the space of contact forces. Configurations are generated for given values of the…
We numerically study a simple sliding system: a rigid mass pulled by a spring with a strong in-plane stiffness anisotropy and a small misalignment angle. Simulations show that the apparent stick phase appearing in this system is in reality…
Wearless dry friction of an elastic block of weight N, driven by an external force F over a rigid substrate, is investigated. The slider and substrate surfaces are both microscopically rough, interacting via a repulsive potential that…
Friction is fundamental to mechanical stability across scales, from geological faults and architectural structures to granular materials and animal feet. We study the mechanical stability of a minimal friction-stabilized structure composed…
The local and global dynamics of a sheared granular medium are studied in a model experiment as a function of several macroscopic parameters. We observe that by changing the shear rate or the loading stiffness, the system crackles, with…
In this work, we analyse the stick-slip motion of a soft elastomeric block on a smooth, hard surface under the application of shear, which is induced by a puller moving at a steady velocity. The frictional stress is generated by make-break…
We report a surface instability observed during the extrusion of extremely soft elastic solids in confined geometries. Due to their unique rheological properties, these soft solids can migrate through narrow gaps by continuously everting…
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…
The way granular materials response to an applied shear stress is of the utmost relevance to both human activities and natural environment. One of the their most intriguing and less understood behavior, is the stick-instability, whose most…
We consider the familiar problem of a bump, or ruck, in a rug. Under lateral compression, a rug bends out of the plane forming a ruck -- a localized region in which it is no longer in contact with the floor. We show that when the external…
Built on the tenets of rational thermodynamics, this article proposes a theory of strain gradient thermo-visco-plasticity for isotropic polycrystalline materials under high strain rates. The effect of micro-inertia, which arises due to…
Through experiments, we idealise a plant leaf as a flexible, thin, rectangular plate clamped at the midpoint and positioned perpendicular to an airflow. Flexibility of the structure is considered as an advantage at moderate flow speed…
We report experimental results on the decay of wave turbulence in an elastic plate obtained by stopping the forcing from a stationary turbulent state. In the stationary case, the forcing is seen to induce some anisotropy and a spectrum in…
Stick-slip motion, a common phenomenon observed during crawling of cells, is found to be strongly sensitive to the substrate stiffness. Stick-slip behaviours have previously been investigated typically using purely elastic substrates. For a…
We numerically study the flow of dense granular materials between parallel plates driven by an external force. The granular materials form a jammed solid-like state when the external force is below a critical force, while they flow like…
The motion of weights attached to a chain or string moving on a frictionless pulley is a classic problem of introductory physics used to understand the relationship between force and acceleration. Here, we consider the dynamics of the chain…
Amorphous solids such as coffee foam, toothpaste or mayonnaise display a transient creep flow when a stress $\Sigma$ is suddenly imposed. The associated strain rate is commonly found to decay in time as $\dot{\gamma} \sim t^{-\nu}$,…
Flowing granular materials often abruptly arrest if not driven by sufficient applied stresses. Such abrupt cessation of motion can be economically expensive in industrial materials handling and processing, and is significantly consequential…
A granular instability driven by gravity is studied experimentally and numerically. The instability arises as grains fall in a closed Hele-Shaw cell where a layer of dense granular material is positioned above a layer of air. The initially…