Related papers: Force chain dynamics in a quasi-static granular pi…
The dynamical properties of a dense horizontally vibrated bidisperse granular monolayer are experimentally investigated. The quench protocol produces states with a frozen structure of the assembly, but the remaining degrees of freedom…
Force networks form the skeleton of static granular matter. They are the key ingredient to mechanical properties, such as stability, elasticity and sound transmission, which are of utmost importance for civil engineering and industrial…
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…
The local and global dynamics of a sheared granular medium are studied in a model experiment as a function of several macroscopic parameters. We observe that by changing the shear rate or the loading stiffness, the system crackles, with…
Tightly packed granular particles under shear often exhibit intriguing intermittencies, specifically, sudden stress drops that we refer to as quaking. To probe the nature of this phenomenon, we prototype a circular shear cell that is…
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…
We study the appearance of large-scale dynamical heterogeneities in a simplified model of a driven, dissipative granular system. Simulations of steady-state gravity-driven flows of inelastically colliding hard disks show the formation of…
Entangled granular systems exhibit mechanical rigidity and resistance to deformation, reminiscent of cohesive materials, due to their reduced degrees of freedom and contact friction. A quantitative understanding of how classical granular…
We investigate the approach to catastrophic failure in a model porous granular material undergoing uniaxial compression. A discrete element computational model is used to simulate both the micro-structure of the material and the complex…
We report arrays of monodisperse water-in-oil microdroplets printed onto a substrate in a form of a compact linear chain -- a 1D-crystal -- pinned at one end. The chain spontaneously collapses under capillary forces via a sequence of…
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.…
Experiments on the low-speed impact of solid objects into granular media have been used both to mimic geophysical events and to probe the unusual nature of the granular state of matter. Observations have been interpreted in terms of…
The mechanical response of static, unconfined, overcompressed face centred cubic, granular arrays is studied using large-scale, discrete element method simulations. Specifically, the stress response due to the application of a localised…
Earthquakes at seismogenic plate boundaries are a response to the differential motions of tectonic blocks embedded within a geometrically complex network of branching and coalescing faults. Elastic strain is accumulated at a slow strain…
A two-dimensional dense fluid of frictional grains is shown to exhibit time-chaotic, spatially heterogeneous flow in a range of stress values, $\sigma$, chosen in the unstable region of s-shaped flow curves. Stress controlled simulations…
Intuition tells us that a rolling or spinning sphere will eventually stop due to the presence of friction and other dissipative interactions. The resistance to rolling and spinning/twisting torque that stops a sphere also changes the…
In a recent paper (Gonzalez et al., 2023), we investigated the motion of grains within a granular bed sheared by a viscous fluid, and showed how segregation and hardening occur in the fluid- (bedload) and solid-like (creep) regions. In this…
We revisit the problem of the stress distribution in a frictional sandpile under gravity, equipped with a new numerical model of granular assemblies with both normal and tangential (frictional) inter-granular forces. Numerical simulations…
Granular materials are inherently out-of-equilibrium systems due to energy dissipation through inelastic collisions and friction. When driven by mechanical agitation such as vibration, they exhibit rich collective behaviors including…
By means of contact dynamic simulations, we investigate the contact network topology and force chains in two-dimensional packings of elongated particles modeled by rounded-cap rectangles. The morphology of large packings of elongated…