Related papers: Anomalous Creep as a Precursor to Failure in Granu…
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…
We investigate the gravity driven rapid failure of a granular step composed of non-cohesive steel beads. The step is initially held together with electromagnets, and released when the current is switched off. We visualize the surface and…
The dynamics of dislocation assemblies in deforming crystals indicate the emergence of collective phenomena, intermittent fluctuations and strain avalanches. In polycrystalline materials, the understanding of plastic deformation mechanisms…
Unstable systems of fluidized grains in a very-narrow vertical tube can auto-defluidize after some time, the settling particles forming either a glass- or crystal-like structure. We carried out experiments using different polymer spheres,…
Using a recently developed continuum theory of dislocation dynamics, we derive three new predictions about plasticity and grain boundary formation in crystals. (1) There will be a residual stress jump across grain boundaries and…
We studied the creep motion of granular materials in a gradient potential field that is created using a slow spin-up experiment device. Natural sand confined in the acrylic box is spun up by a controlled turntable and the surface flows are…
Polycrystalline materials have a viscoelastic rheology where the strains produced by stresses depend on the timescale of deformation. Energy can be stored elastically within grain interiors and dissipated by a variety of different…
Experimental results are presented for a vertically shaken granular layer. In the range of accelerations explored, the layer develops a convective motion in the form of one or more rolls. The velocity of the grains near the wall has been…
From small seeds falling from trees to asteroids colliding with planets and moons, the impact of projectiles onto granular targets occurs in nature at different scales. In this paper, we investigate open questions in the mechanics of…
As if it has become a consensus that the slope of the granular heap is straight, and from that, an angle of repose is defined. However, closer inspection shows that the slopes are not truly straight, instead, more often they have convex…
Avalanches of grain displacements can be generated by creating local voids within the interior of a granular material at rest in a bin. Modeling such a two-dimensional granular system by a collection of mono-disperse discs, the system on…
During plastic deformation, metals change shape while continuously becoming stronger. The microscopic origin of these processes lies in the proliferation and movement of line defects, dislocations, and the subsequent self-organisation and…
We study the internal dynamical processes taking place in a granular packing below yield stress. At all packing fractions and down to vanishingly low applied shear, a logarithmic creep is evidenced. The experiments are analyzed under the…
Granular materials are defined as collections of macroscopic dissipative particles. Although these systems are ubiquitous in our lives, the nature and the causes of their non-trivial collective dynamics still remain elusive and have…
Slow earthquakes differ from regular earthquakes in their slower moment release and size distribution dominated by smaller events. However, the physical origin of these slow earthquake statistics remains controversial. In this work, we…
Matrix stiffness expressions are derived for the particle movements in an assembly of rigid granules having compliant contacts. The derivations include stiffness terms that arise from the particle shapes at their contacts. These geometric…
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…
Dry granular materials such as sand, gravel, pills, or agricultural grains, can become rigid when compressed or sheared. At low density, one can distort the shape of a container of granular material without encountering any resistance.…
We show how rigidity emerges in experiments of sheared frictional granular materials by using generalizations of two methods for identifying rigid structures. Both approaches, the force-based dynamical matrix and the topology-based rigidity…
Amorphous grain boundary complexions act as toughening features within a microstructure because they can absorb dislocations more efficiently than traditional grain boundaries. This toughening effect should be a strong function of the local…