Related papers: From Plasticity to a Renormalisation Group
To study materials phenomena simultaneously at various length scales, descriptions in which matter can be coarse grained to arbitrary levels, are necessary. Attempts to do this in the static regime (i.e. zero temperature) have already been…
A basic problem in the science of realistic granular matter is the plethora of heuristic models of the stress field in the absence of a first-principles theory. Such a theory is formulated here, based on the idea that static granular…
"Granular elasticity," useful for calculating static stress distributions in granular media, is generalized by including the effects of slowly moving, deformed grains. The result is a hydrodynamic theory for granular solids that agrees well…
A wide range of disordered materials, from biological to geological assemblies, feature discrete elements undergoing large shape changes. How significant geometrical variations at the microscopic scale affect the response of the assembly,…
The transmission of stress through a marginally stable granular pile in two dimensions is exactly formulated in terms of a vector field of loop forces, and thence in terms of a single scalar potential. The loop force formulation leads to a…
Stress transmission in planar open-cell cellular solids is analysed using a recent theory developed for marginally rigid granular assemblies. This is made possible by constructing a one-to-one mapping between the two systems. General…
In many interesting physical settings, such as the vulcanization of rubber, the introduction of permanent random constraints between the constituents of a homogeneous fluid can cause a phase transition to a random solid state. In this…
Features of rheological laws applied to solid-like granular materials are recalled and confronted to microscopic approaches via discrete numerical simulations. We give examples of model systems with very similar equilibrium stress transport…
Granular systems are not always homogeneous and can be composed of grains with very different mechanical properties. To improve our understanding of the behavior of real granular systems, in this experimental study, we compress 2D…
We study the propagation of uniformly translating fronts into a linearly unstable state, both analytically and numerically. We introduce a perturbative renormalization group (RG) approach to compute the change in the propagation speed when…
The physical properties of granular materials have been extensively studied in recent years. So far, however, there exists no theoretical framework which can explain the observations in a unified manner beyond the phenomenological jamming…
A simple analytical model of intergranular normal stresses is proposed for a general elastic polycrystalline material with arbitrary shaped and randomly oriented grains under uniform loading. The model provides algebraic expressions for the…
Stress paths in granular matter often suffer sudden large-scale rearrangements when the system is slightly perturbed, i.e. granular systems are unstable. We show in this paper that the observed instability is due to the minimally rigid, or…
Scaling concepts and renormalization group (RG) methods are applied to a simple linear model of human posture control consisting of a trembling or quivering string subject to damping and restoring forces. The string is driven by…
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…
Model experiments are reported on the build-up of granular piles in two dimensions. These show that as the initial density of falling grains is increased, the resulting pile has decreasing final density and its coordination number…
In physics one attempts to infer the rules governing a system given only the results of imperfect measurements. Hence, microscopic theories may be effectively indistinguishable experimentally. We develop an operationally motivated procedure…
We have recently developed some simple continuum models of static granular media which display "fragile" behaviour: they predict that the medium is unable to support certain types of infinitesimal load (which we call "incompatible" loads)…
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 illustrate how to extend the concept of structural stability through applying it to the front propagation speed selection problem. This consideration leads us to a renormalization group study of the problem. The study illustrates two…