Related papers: Effects of particle angularity on granular self-or…
During quasi-static dynamics of granular systems, the stress and structure self-organise, but there is currently no quantitative measure or understanding of this phenomenon. Such an understanding is essential because local structural…
The mechanical strength and flow of granular materials can depend strongly on the shapes of individual grains. We report quantitative results obtained from photoelasticimetry experiments on locally loaded, quasi-two-dimensional granular…
The stress profile and reorientation of grains, in response to a point force applied to a preloaded two dimensional granular system, are calculated in the context of a continuum theory that incorporates the texture of the packing. When high…
Granular material exposed to shear shows a variety of unique phenomena: Reynolds dilatancy, positional order and orientational order effects may compete in the shear zone. We study granular packings consisting of macroscopic prolate, oblate…
We model two-dimensional systems of granular aggregates confined between two planes and demonstrate that at a critical grain volume fraction an abrupt rigidity transition occurs. This transition is observed both in static and shear tests.…
Directed growth, anisotropic cell shapes, and confinement drive self-organization in multicellular systems. We investigate the influence of particle shape on the distribution and dynamics of nematic microdomains in a minimal in-silico model…
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…
We investigate how structural ordering, i.e. crystallization, affects the flow of bidisperse granular materials in a quasi-two-dimensional silo. By systematically varying the mass fraction of two particle sizes, we finely tune the degree of…
We study the stress profile of an ordered two-dimensional packing of beads in response to the application of a vertical overload localized at its top surface. Disorder is introduced through the Coulombic friction between the grains which…
We identify the fundamental factors determining the microstructural (MS) statistics of granular systems, using numerical experiments on 2D assemblies of polydisperse frictional discs and studying the emergent properties of quadrons (Qs),…
The response to a localized force provides a sensitive test for different models of stress transmission in granular solids. The elasto-plastic models traditionally used by engineers have been challenged by theoretical and experimental…
Atomic crystals with dislocations deform plastically at low stresses via dislocation glide. Whether dislocation glide occurs in macroscopic frictional granular media has remained unknown. The discrete element method is employed to simulate…
When granular materials of shape-anisotropic grains are sheared in a split-bottom shear cell, a localized shear band is formed with a depression at its center. This effect is closely related to the alignment of the particles with aspect…
The rheology of dense granular shear flows is influenced by friction and particle shape. We investigate numerically the impact of non-spherical particle geometries under shear on packing fraction, stress ratios, velocity fluctuations, force…
We present a systematic investigation of the distribution of normal forces at the boundaries of static packings of spheres. A new method for the efficient construction of large hexagonal-close-packed crystals is introduced and used to study…
We study numerically the influence of confinement on the solid fraction and on the structure of three-dimensional random close packed (RCP) granular materials subject to gravity. The effects of grain shape (spherical or polyhedral),…
The interplay between dilatancy and particle alignment in sheared granular materials composed of non-spherical particles leads to morphological inhomogeneity. Dilatancy, driven by interparticle friction, causes the packing to expand, while…
Dislocation dynamics simulation is used to investigate the effect of grain size and grain shape on the flow stress in model copper grains. We consider grains of 1.25-10 $\mu$m size, three orientations (<135>, <100> and <111>) and three…
Non-motile elongated bacteria confined in two-dimensional open micro-channels can exhibit collective motion and form dense monolayers with nematic order if the cells proliferate, i.e., grow and divide. Using soft molecular dynamics…
We study by means of molecular dynamics simulations of periodic shear cells, the influence of particle shape on the global mechanical behavior of dense granular media. Results at macro-mechanical level show that for large shear deformation…