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Many Local Group dwarf spheroidal galaxies are found in the Galactic halo along great circles in the sky. Some of these stellar systems are thought to be the fragments of larger parent galaxies which have once intruded into and were torn…
The fracture strength distribution of materials is often described in terms of the Weibull law which can be derived by using extreme value statistics if elastic interactions are ignored. Here, we consider explicitly the interplay between…
It has been shown that temperature cycles on airless bodies of our Solar System can cause damaging of surface materials. Nevertheless, propagation mechanisms in the case of space objects are still poorly understood. Present work combines a…
We study experimentally the fluctuations of deformation along a shear fault naturally emerging within a compressed frictional granular medium. Using laser interferometry, we show that the deformation inside this granular gouge occurs as a…
Numerical modeling has long suggested that gravitationally-bound (or so-called rubble-pile) near-Earth asteroids (NEAs) can be destroyed by tidal forces during close and slow encounters with terrestrial planets. However, tidal disruptions…
Trail interactions occur when past particle trajectories bias future motion, rendering the system out of thermodynamic equilibrium. While such systems are abundant in nature, their understanding is limited to the single-particle level or…
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…
Geologic shear fractures such as faults and slip surfaces involve marked friction along the discontinuities as they are subjected to significant confining pressures. This friction plays a critical role in the growth of these shear…
Most of the research concerting crack propagation in discrete media is concerned with specific types of external loading: displacements on the boundaries, or constant energy fluxes or feeding waves originating from infinity. In this paper…
Context: During the first stages of dust coagulation in protoplanetary disks, the dust aggregates are expected to have a high degree of porosity. Most models of dust growth, however, do not take this into account. The reason for this is the…
Here we theoretically and computationally study the frequency dependence of phase speed and attenuation for marine sediments from the perspective of granular mechanics. We leverage recent theoretical insights from the granular physics…
Most asteroids with a diameter larger than $\sim 300 \ {\rm m}$ are rubble piles i.e. consisting of more than one solid object. All asteroids are rotating but almost all asteroids larger than $\sim 300 \ {\rm m}$ rotate with a period longer…
Numerical simulations of asteroid break-ups, including both the fragmentation of the parent body and the gravitational interactions between the fragments, have allowed us to reproduce successfully the main properties of asteroid families…
A novel structure of sheet-pile groin consists of row piles and tied sheet has been introduced to resist the impact of tidal bore in recent years. However, the dynamic responses of the structure under tidal bore have not been carefully…
Dohnanyi's (1969) theory predicts that a collisional system such as the asteroidal population of the main belt should rapidly relax to a power-law stationary size distribution of the kind $N(m)\propto m^{-\alpha}$, with $\alpha$ very close…
Fracturing in reservoir rocks is an important issue for the petroleum industry - as productivity can be enhanced by a controlled fracturing operation. Fracturing also has a big impact on CO2 storage, geothermal installation and gas…
When plane waves diffract through fractal-patterned apertures, the resulting far-field profiles or diffractals also exhibit iterated, self-similar features. Here we show that this specific architecture enables robust signal processing and…
We have studied the propagation of a crack front along the heterogeneous weak plane of a transparent poly(methyl methacrylate) (PMMA) block using two different loading conditions: imposed constant velocity and creep relaxation. We have…
Natural Disasters like hurricanes, floods or earthquakes can damage power grid devices and create cascading blackouts and islands. The nature of failure propagation and extent of damage is dependent on the structural features of the grid,…
Simulating dynamic rupture propagation is challenging due to the uncertainties involved in the underlying physics of fault slip, stress conditions, and frictional properties of the fault. A trial and error approach is often used to…