Related papers: On Phase Transition and Self-Organized Critical St…
The random first-order transition (RFOT) theory of the structural glass transition is reviewed in a pedagogical fashion. The rigidity that emerges in crystals and glassy liquids is of the same fundamental origin. In both cases, it…
The addition of a small quantity of flexible fibers in a granular material is an efficient technique to increase the yield stress of the material. While the influence of fiber addition on the mechanical strength of granular media has been…
Failure in disordered solids is accompanied by intermittent fluctuations extending over a broad range of scales. The implied scaling has been previously associated with either spinodal or critical points. We use an analytically transparent…
Static granular packings are model hard-sphere glass formers. The nature of glass transition has remained a hotly debated issue. We review recent experimental progresses in using granular materials to study glass transitions. We focus on…
Off-equilibrium dynamics of a three-dimensional lattice model with nearest- and next nearest-neighbors exclusions is studied. At equilibrium, the model undergoes a first-order fluid-solid transition. Non-equilibrium filling, through random…
We have found that the ability of long thin rods to jam into a solid-like state in response to a local perturbation depends upon both the particle aspect ratio and the container size. The dynamic phase diagram in this parameter space…
A system of N classical particles in a 2D periodic cell interacting via long-range attractive potential is studied. For low energy density $U$ a collapsed phase is identified, while in the high energy limit the particles are homogeneously…
Polycrystalline materials can be viewed as composites of crystalline particles or grains separated from one another by thin amorphous grain boundary (GB) regions. While GB have been exhaustively investigated at low temperatures, where these…
The ability of grains to rotate can play a crucial role on the collective behavior of granular media. It has been observed in computer simulations that imposing a torque at the contacts modifies the force chains, making support chains less…
Using Brownian dynamics computer simulations we show that a two-dimensional suspension of self-propelled ("active") colloidal particles crystallizes at sufficiently high densities. Compared to the equilibrium freezing of passive particles…
Granular media jam into a panoply of metastable states. The way in which these states are achieved depends on the nature of local and global constraints on grains; here we investigate this issue by means of a non-equilibrium stochastic…
We examine a two-dimensional system of sterically repulsive interacting disks where each particle runs in a random direction. This system is equivalent to a run-and-tumble dynamics system in the limit where the run time is infinite. At low…
We experimentally study the critical properties of the non-equilibrium solid-liquid-like transition that takes place in vibrated granular matter. The critical dynamics is characterized by the coupling of the density field with the…
We investigate the link between particle-scale dynamics and bulk behaviors of thickly-coated particle-fluid flows using computational simulations. We find that, similar to dense fully-saturated slurries, the form the rheology takes in these…
Discrete-element simulations are used to monitor several micro-scale characteristics within a granular material, demonstrating their convergence during loading toward the critical state, their stationarity at the critical state, and the…
We report the experimental and theoretical study of electrostatically driven granular material. We show that the charged granular medium undergoes a hysteretic first order phase transition from the immobile condensed state (granular solid)…
We present here a detailed numerical study of the dynamical behaviour of `soft' uncompressed grains in a granular chain where the grains interact via the intrinsically nonlinear Hertz force. It is well known that such a chain supports the…
Odd elasticity describes the unusual elastic response of solids whose stress-strain relationship is not compatible with an elastic potential. Here, we present a study of odd elasticity in a driven granular matter system composed of grains…
Microstructural evolution in structural materials is known to occur in response to mechanical loading and can often accommodate substantial plastic deformation through the coupled motion of grain boundaries (GBs). This can produce desirable…
The interplay between the diffusion-controlled dynamics of a solidification front and the trajectory of a grain boundary groove at the solid-liquid interface is studied by means of thin-sample directional solidification experiments of a…