Related papers: Compaction and mobility in randomly agitated granu…
A loosely packed bed of sand sits precariously on the fence between mechanically stable and flowing states. This has especially strong implications for animals or vehicles needing to navigate sandy environments, which can sink and become…
Granular packings display a wealth of mechanical features which are of widespread significance. One of these features is creep: the slow deformation under applied stress. Creep is common for many other amorphous materials such as many…
We study the drag force on discrete objects with circular cross section moving slowly through a spherical granular medium. Variations in the geometry of the dragged object change the drag force only by a small fraction relative to shape…
We measure the quasi-static friction force acting on intruders moving downwards into a granular medium. By utilizing different intruder geometries, we demonstrate that the force acts locally normal to the intruder surface. By altering the…
Analyzing the dynamics of a vibrated bi-dimensional packing of bidisperse granular discs below jamming, we provide evidences of a Gardner phase deep into the glass phase. To do so we perform several independent compression cycles within the…
We present our recent study on rough adhesive contacts of viscoelastic materials in steady-state sliding, focusing on the interplay between adhesion and viscoelasticity by means of a novel energy approach. We investigate tribological…
We study the motions of small solids, ranging from micron-sized dust grains to meter-sized objects, in the vicinity of local pressure enhancements of a gaseous nebula. Integrating numerically, we show that as a result of the combined effect…
A massive intruder in a homogeneously driven granular fluid, in dilute configurations, performs a memory-less Brownian motion with drag and temperature simply related to the average density and temperature of the fluid. At volume fraction…
We introduce a lattice model, in which frustration plays a crucial role, to describe relaxation properties of granular media. We show Monte Carlo results for compaction in the presence of vibrations and gravity, which compare well with…
It is shown that vibrated packings of frictional disks self-organize cooperatively onto a rotational-transport state where the long-time angular velocity $\bar\omega_i$ of each disk $i$ is nonzero. Steady rotation is mediated by the…
The macroscopic friction of particulate materials often weakens as the flow rate is increased, leading to potentially disastrous intermittent phenomena including earthquakes and landslides. We theoretically and numerically study this…
We propose a theory which describes the density relaxation of loosely packed, cohesionless granular material under mechanical tapping. Using the compactivity concept we develope a formalism of statistical mechanics which allows us to…
We investigate regular configurations of a small number of particles settling under gravity in a viscous fluid. The particles do not touch each other and can move relative to each other. The dynamics is analyzed in the point-particle…
The mechanical properties of a disordered heterogeneous medium depend, in general, on a complex interplay between multiple length scales. Connecting local interactions to macroscopic observables, such as stiffness or fracture, is thus…
We experimentally study the velocity scaling of granular convection which is a possible mechanism of the regolith migration on the surface of small asteroids. In order to evaluate the contribution of granular convection to the regolith…
We study the quasi-static penetration of a flexible beam in a two-dimensional dense granular medium lying on an horizontal plate. Rather than a buckling-like behavior we observe a transition between a regime of crack-like penetration in…
The migration of active particles in slowly moving, crowded, and heterogeneous media is fundamental to various biological processes and technological applications, such as cargo transport. In this study, we numerically investigate the…
In this work, we investigate the unjamming transition in a three-dimensional granular system composed of frictional spheres, in which the packing fraction is systematically reduced by random particle extractions. Using Discrete Element…
We investigate a stochastic model describing a column of grains in the jamming limit, in the presence of a low vibrational intensity. The key control parameter of the model, $\epsilon$, is a representation of granular shape, related to the…
Using molecular dynamics simulations, we study the slow dynamics of supercooled liquids confined in a random matrix of immobile obstacles. We study the dynamical crossover from glass-like to Lorentz-gas-like behavior in terms of the density…