Related papers: Anomalous Creep as a Precursor to Failure in Granu…
Odd elasticity describes the unusual elastic response of solids whose stress-strain relationship is not compatible with an elastic potential. Here, we present a study of odd elasticity in a driven granular matter system composed of grains…
When a jet of gas impinges vertically on a granular bed and forms a crater, the grains may be moved by several different mechanisms: viscous erosion, diffused gas eruption, bearing capacity failure, and/or diffusion-driven shearing. The…
Granular materials such as sand, powders, foams etc. are ubiquitous in our daily life, as well as in industrial and geotechnical applications. Although these disordered systems form stable structures if unperturbed, in practice they do…
It is possible to build free-standing, load-bearing structures using only rocks and loops of elastic material. We investigate how these structures emerge, and find that the necessary maximum loop spacing (the critical spacing) is a function…
Granular convergence is a property of a granular pack as it is repeatedly sheared in a cyclic, quasistatic fashion, as the packing configuration changes via discrete events. Under suitable conditions the set of microscopic configurations…
In granular systems, thermal cycling causes compaction, creep, penetration of dense objects, and ratcheting of grains against each other. On asteroid surfaces, thermal cycling is high amplitude and can happen billions of times in a few…
We present simple models of particulate materials whose mechanical integrity arises from a jamming process. We argue that such media are generically "fragile", that is, they are unable to support certain types of incremental loading without…
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…
We report on experiments to measure the temporal and spatial evolution of packing arrangements of anisotropic and weakly confined granular material, using high-resolution $\gamma$-ray adsorption. In these experiments, the particle…
Using numerical simulations it is shown that a jammed, random pack of soft frictional grains can store an arbitrary waveform that is applied as a small time-dependent shear while the system is slowly compressed. When the system is…
Building materials such as concretes and mortar are formed by solidifying granular slabs. Such materials are often fractured by giant forces such as during earthquakes, leading to the collapse of structures and potentially casualties. One…
Stressed under a constant load, materials creep with a final acceleration of deformation and for any given applied stress and material, the creep failure time can strongly vary. We investigate creep on sheets of paper and confront the…
Several mechanisms cause a granular material to strengthen over time at low applied stress. The strength is determined from the maximum frictional force F_max experienced by a shearing plate in contact with wet or dry granular material…
In two-dimensional rotating drum experiments, we find two separate influences of the packing fraction of a granular heap on its stability. For a fixed grain shape, the stability increases with packing fraction. However, in determining the…
Frictional weakening by vibrations was first invoked in the 70's to explain unusual fault slips and earthquakes, low viscosity during the collapse of impact craters or the extraordinary mobility of sturzstroms, peculiar rock avalanches…
The traction evolution is a fundamental ingredient to model the dynamics of an earthquake rupture which ultimately controls, during the coseismic phase, the energy release, the stress redistribution and the consequent excitation of seismic…
When materials are loaded below their short-term strength over extended periods, a slow time-dependent process known as creep deformation takes place. During creep deformation, the structural properties of a material evolve as a function of…
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…
The failure of 2D numerical cohesive granular steps collapsing under gravity are simulated for a large range of cohesion. Focussing on the cumulative displacement of the grains, and defining a displacement threshold, we establish a sensible…
Granular materials can fail through spontaneous events like earthquakes or brittle fracture. However, measurements and analytic models which forecast failure in this class of materials, while of both fundamental and practical interest,…