Related papers: Gel-like granular materials with high durability a…
By mixing glass beads with a curable polymer we create a well-defined cohesive granular medium, held together by solidified, and hence elastic, capillary bridges. This material has a geometry similar to a wet packing of beads, but with an…
We study here the spontaneous clustering of a submonolayer of grains under horizontal circular shaking. The clustering of grains occurs when increasing the oscillation amplitude beyond a threshold. The dense area travels in a circular…
We have studied the elastic deformation of freely suspended atomically thin sheets of muscovite mica, a widely used electrical insulator in its bulk form. Using an atomic force microscope, we carried out bending test experiments to…
Amorphous solids are ubiquitous among natural and man-made materials. Often used as structural materials for their attractive mechanical properties, their utility depends critically on their response to applied stresses. Processes…
Materials that can be deformed by thermal stresses at room temperature are called soft materials. Colloidal suspensions comprising solid particles evenly distributed in a fluid phase (smoke, fog, ink and milk, for example),…
We present an experimental study of the deformation inside a granular material that is progressively tilted. We investigate the deformation before the avalanche with a spatially resolved Diffusive Wave Spectroscopy setup. At the beginning…
Sand ripples are commonly observed in both nature and industry. For example, they are found on riverbeds and in oil pipelines that transport sand. In both natural and industrial cases, ripples increase friction between the bed and fluid and…
Dry solid friction is often accompanied by force modulations originating from stick-slip instabilities. Here a distinct, quasi-static mechanism is evidenced leading to quasi-periodic force oscillations during sliding contact between an…
Non-cohesive granular media exhibit complex responses to sudden impact that often differ from those of ordinary solids and liquids. We investigate how this response is mediated by the presence of interstitial gas between the grains. Using…
When compressed frictional granular media are decompressed, generically a fragile configuration is created at low pressures. Typically this is accompanied by a giant frictional slippage as the fragile state collapses. We show that this…
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…
We investigate the weakening of elastic materials through randomly distributed circles and cracks numerically and compare the results to predictions from homogenization theories. We find a good agreement for the case of randomly oriented…
The presence of interparticle cohesion can drastically change the behavior of granular materials. For instance, powders are challenging to handle, and one can make a sandcastle using wet grains. In this study, we report experimental results…
Liquid may give strong cohesion properties to a granular medium, and confer a solid-like behavior. We study the erosion of a fixed circular aggregate of wet granular matter subjected to a flow of dry grains inside a half-filled rotating…
Many clays, soils, biological tissues, foods, and coatings are shrinkable, granular materials: they are composed of packed, hydrated grains that shrink when dried. In many cases, these packings crack during drying, critically hindering…
Surfaces of planets and small bodies of our Solar System are often covered by a layer of granular material that can range from a fine regolith to a gravel-like structure of varying depths. Therefore, the dynamics of granular materials are…
We investigate, at a laboratory scale, the collapse of cylindrical shells of radius $R$ and thickness $t$ induced by a granular discharge. We measure the critical filling height for which the structure fails upon discharge. We observe that…
We describe size-varying cylindrical particles made from silicone elastomers that can serve as building blocks for robotic granular materials. The particle size variation, which is achieved by inflation, gives rise to changes in stiffness…
Granular materials size segregate when exposed to external periodic perturbations such as vibrations. Moreover, mixtures of grains of different sizes spontaneously segregate in the absence of external perturbations: when a mixture is simply…
Cohesive granular materials such as wet sand, snow, and powders can flow like a viscous liquid. However, the elementary mechanisms of momentum transport in such athermal particulate fluids are elusive. As a result, existing models for…