Related papers: Granular matter instability: A structural rigidity…
A granular instability driven by gravity is studied experimentally and numerically. The instability arises as grains fall in a closed Hele-Shaw cell where a layer of dense granular material is positioned above a layer of air. The initially…
We report on experimentally observed shear stress fluctuations in both granular solid and fluid states, showing that they are non-Gaussian at low shear rates, reflecting the predominance of correlated structures (force chains) in the…
The evolution of the internal granular structure in shear-arrested and shear-flowing states of granular materials is characterized using fabric tensors as descriptors of the internal contact and force networks. When a dilute system 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…
The mechanics of granular media at low liquid saturation levels remain poorly understood. Macroscopic mechanical properties are affected by microscale forces and processes, such as capillary forces, inter-particle friction, liquid flows,…
The complex incremental behavior of granular materials is explored with multi-directional loading probes. An advanced discrete element model (DEM) was used to examine the reversible and irreversible strains for small loading probes, which…
We reveal significant qualitative differences in the rigidity transition of three types of disordered network materials: randomly diluted spring networks, jammed sphere packings, and stress-relieved networks that are diluted using a…
Flowing granular materials often abruptly arrest if not driven by sufficient applied stresses. Such abrupt cessation of motion can be economically expensive in industrial materials handling and processing, and is significantly consequential…
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 use a minimal model for a dense suspension undergoing thickening and thinning to investigate microstructural changes in 2d simulations. Our simulations show that in steady flow the contact network contains distinct building blocks which…
Granular materials such as sand, powders, foams etc. are ubiquitous in our daily life, as well as in industrial and geotechnical applications. Although these disordered systems form stable structures if unperturbed, in practice they do…
Dense granular materials and other particle aggregates transmit stress in a manner that belies their microstructural disorder. A subset of the particle contact network is strikingly coherent, wherein contacts are aligned nearly linearly and…
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…
The transition from a flowing to a static state in a granular material is studied using large-scale, 3D particle simulations. Similar to glasses, this transition is manifested in the development of a plateau in the contact normal force…
Mechanical densification of granular bodies is a process in which a loose material becomes increasingly cohesive as the applied pressure increases. A constitutive description of this process faces the formidable problem that granular and…
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,…
Granular packings of non-convex or elongated particles can form free-standing structures like walls or arches. For some particle shapes, such as staples, the rigidity arises from interlocking of pairs of particles, but the origins of…
Granular convergence is a property of a granular pack as it is repeatedly sheared in a cyclic, quasistatic fashion, as the packing configuration changes via discrete events. Under suitable conditions the set of microscopic configurations…
The response of amorphous materials to an applied strain can be continuous, or instead display a macroscopic stress drop when a shear band nucleates. Such discontinuous response can be observed if the initial configuration is very stable.…
The particle discrete element simulation of the instability and failure process of the granular slope accumulator model when the metal plate continues downward is obtained, and the two-dimensional total velocity vector of soil particle…