An instrument for studying granular media in low-gravity environment

A new experimental facility has been designed and constructed to study driven granular media in a low-gravity environment. This versatile instrument, fully automatized, with a modular design based on several interchangeable experimental cells, allows us to investigate research topics ranging from dilute to dense regimes of granular media such as granular gas, segregation, convection, sound propagation, jamming, and rheology-all without the disturbance by gravitational stresses active on Earth. Here, we present the main parameters, protocols, and performance characteristics of the instrument. The current scientific objectives are then briefly described and, as a proof of concept, some first selected results obtained in low gravity during parabolic flight campaigns are presented.

Shear-induced rigidity of frictional particles: Analysis of emergent order in stress space

Solids are distinguished from fluids by their ability to resist shear. In equilibrium systems, the resistance to shear is associated with the emergence of broken translational symmetry as exhibited by a nonuniform density pattern that is persistent, which in turn results from minimizing the free energy. In this work, we focus on a class of systems where this paradigm is challenged. We show that shear-driven jamming in dry granular materials is a collective process controlled by the constraints of mechanical equilibrium. We argue that these constraints can lead to a persistent pattern in a dual space that encodes the statistics of contact forces and the topology of the contact network. The shear-jamming transition is marked by the appearance of this persistent pattern. We investigate the structure and behavior of patterns both in real space and the dual space as the system evolves through the rigidity transition for a range of packing fractions and in two different shear protocols. We show that, in the protocol that creates homogeneous jammed states without shear bands, measures of shear jamming do not depend on strain and packing fraction independently but obey a scaling form with a packing-fraction-dependent characteristic strain that goes to zero at the isotropic jamming point ϕ_{J}. We demonstrate that it is possible to define a protocol-independent order parameter in this dual space, which provides a quantitative measure of the rigidity of shear-jammed states.

How the ideal jamming point illuminates the world of granular media

The zero temperature properties of frictionless soft spheres near the jamming point have been extensively studied both numerically and theoretically; these studies provide a reliable base for the interpretation of experiments. However, recent work by Ikeda et al. showed that, in a parameter space of the temperature and packing fraction, experiments to date on colloids have been rather far from the theoretical scaling regime. An important question is then whether theoretical results concerning point-J are applicable to any physical/experimental system, including granular media, which we consider here. On the surface, such a-thermal, frictional systems might appear even further from the idealized case of thermal soft spheres. In this work we address this question via experiments on shaken granular materials near jamming. We have systematically investigated such systems over a number of years using hard metallic grains. The important feature of the present work is the use of much softer grains, cut from photoelastic materials, making it possible to determine forces at the grain scale, the details of the contact networks and the motion of individual grains. Using this new type of particle, we first show that the contact network exhibits remarkable dynamics. We find strong heterogeneities, which are maximum at the packing fraction ϕ*, distinct from and smaller than the packing fraction ϕ(†), where the average number of contacts per particle, z, starts to increase. In the limit of zero mechanical excitation, these two packing fractions converge at point J. We also determine dynamics on time scales ranging from a small fraction of the shaking cycle to thousands of cycles. We can then map the observed system behavior onto results from simulations of ideal thermal soft spheres. Our results indicate that the ideal jamming point indeed illuminates the world of granular media.

Origin of rigidity in dry granular solids

Solids are distinguished from fluids by their ability to resist shear. In traditional solids, the resistance to shear is associated with the emergence of broken translational symmetry as exhibited by a nonuniform density pattern. In this work, we focus on the emergence of shear rigidity in a class of solids where this paradigm is challenged. Dry granular materials have no energetically or entropically preferred density modulations. We show that, in contrast to traditional solids, the emergence of shear rigidity in these granular solids is a collective process, which is controlled solely by boundary forces, the constraints of force and torque balance, and the positivity of the contact forces. We develop a theoretical framework based on these constraints, which connects rigidity to broken translational symmetry in the space of forces, not positions of grains. We apply our theory to experimentally generated shear-jammed states and show that these states are indeed characterized by a persistent, non-uniform density modulation in force space, which emerges at the shear-jamming transition.

The Scientist in the Sandbox: Complexity and Dynamics in Granular Flow

Granular materials exhibit a rich variety of dynamical behavior, much of which is poorly understood. Fractal-like stress chains, convection, a variety of wave dynamics, including waves which resemble capillary waves, and fractional Brownian motion provide examples. Although granular materials consist of collections of interacting particles, there are important differences between the dynamics of a collections of grains and the dynamics of a collections of molecules; in particular, the ergodic hypothesis is generally invalid for granular materials, so that ordinary statistical physics does not apply. Nonlinear Dynamics, Mathematics, Molecular Dynamics, and Condensed Matter Physics as well as traditional Engineering fields have all contributed to recent insights for these phenomena.

Microstructure evolution during impact on granular matter

We study the impact of an intruder on a dense granular material. The process of impact and interaction between the intruder and the granular particles is modeled using discrete element simulations in two spatial dimensions. In the first part of the paper we discuss how the intruder's dynamics depends on (1) the intruder's properties, including its size, shape and composition, (2) the properties of the grains, including friction, polydispersity, structural order, and elasticity, and (3) the properties of the system, including its size and gravitational field. It is found that polydispersity and related structural order, and frictional properties of the granular particles, play a crucial role in determining impact dynamics. In the second part of the paper we consider the response of the granular system itself. We discuss the force networks that develop, including their topological evolution. The influence of friction and structural order on force propagation, including the transition from hyperbolic-like to elastic-like behavior is discussed, as well as the affine and nonaffine components of the grain dynamics. Several broad observations include the following: tangential forces between granular particles are found to play a crucial role in determining impact dynamics; both force networks and particle dynamics are correlated with the dynamics of the intruder itself.

Jamming by shear

A broad class of disordered materials including foams, glassy molecular systems, colloids and granular materials can form jammed states. A jammed system can resist small stresses without deforming irreversibly, whereas unjammed systems flow under any applied stresses. The broad applicability of the Liu-Nagel jamming concept has attracted intensive theoretical and modelling interest but has prompted less experimental effort. In the Liu-Nagel framework, jammed states of athermal systems exist only above a certain critical density. Although numerical simulations for particles that do not experience friction broadly support this idea, the nature of the jamming transition for frictional grains is less clear. Here we show that jamming of frictional, disk-shaped grains can be induced by the application of shear stress at densities lower than the critical value, at which isotropic (shear-free) jamming occurs. These jammed states have a much richer phenomenology than the isotropic jammed states: for small applied shear stresses, the states are fragile, with a strong force network that percolates only in one direction. A minimum shear stress is needed to create robust, shear-jammed states with a strong force network percolating in all directions. The transitions from unjammed to fragile states and from fragile to shear-jammed states are controlled by the fraction of force-bearing grains. The fractions at which these transitions occur are statistically independent of the density. Jammed states with densities lower than the critical value have an anisotropic fabric (contact network). The minimum anisotropy of shear-jammed states vanishes as the density approaches the critical value from below, in a manner reminiscent of an order-disorder transition.

Force networks and elasticity in granular silos

We have made experimental observations of the force networks within a two-dimensional granular silo similar to the classical system of Janssen. Models like that of Janssen predict that pressure within a silo saturates with depth as the result of vertical forces being redirected to the walls of the silo where they can then be carried by friction. We use photoelastic particles to obtain information not available in previous silo experiments --the internal force structure. We directly compare various predictions with the results obtained by averaging ensembles of experimentally obtained force networks. We identify several differences between the mean behavior in our system and that predicted by Janssen-like models: We find that the redirection parameter describing how the force network transfers vertical forces to the walls varies with depth. We find that changes in the preparation of the material can cause the pressure within the silo to either saturate or to continue building with depth. Most strikingly, we observe a nonlinear response to overloads applied to the top of the material in the silo. For larger overloads we observe the previously reported "giant overshoot" effect where overload pressure decays only after an initial increase (G. Ovarlez et al., Phys. Rev. E 67, 060302(R) (2003)). For smaller overloads we find that additional pressure propagates to great depth. Analysis of the differences between the inter-grain contact and force networks suggests that, for our system, when the load and the particle weight are comparable, particle elasticity acts to stabilize the force network, allowing deep propagation. For larger loads, the force network rearranges, resulting in the expected, Janssen-like behavior. Thus, a meso-scale network phenomenon results in an observable nonlinearity in the mean pressure profile.

Stress correlations in granular materials: an entropic formulation

We study the response of dry granular materials to external stress using experiment, simulation, and theory. We derive a Ginzburg-Landau functional that enforces mechanical stability and positivity of contact forces. In this framework, the elastic moduli depend only on the applied stress. A combination of this feature and the positivity constraint leads to stress correlations whose shape and magnitude are extremely sensitive to the nature of the applied stress. The predictions from the theory describe the stress correlations for both simulations and experiments semiquantitatively.

Probing dense granular materials by space-time dependent perturbations

The manner in which signals propagate through dense granular systems in both space and time is not well understood. In order to probe this process, we carry out discrete element simulations of the system response to excitations where we control the driving frequency and wavelength independently. Fourier analysis shows that properties of the signal depend strongly on the space-time scales of the perturbation. The features of the response provide a test bed for models that predict statistical and continuum space-time properties. We illustrate this connection between microscale physics and macroscale behavior by comparing the system response to a simple elastic model with damping.

Why do granular materials stiffen with shear rate? Test of novel stress-based statistics

Recent experiments exhibit a rate dependence for granular shear such that the stress grows linearly in the logarithm of the shear rate, gamma. Assuming a generalized activated process mechanism, we show that these observations are consistent with a recent proposal for a stress-based statistical ensemble. By contrast, predictions for rate dependence using conventional energy-based statistical mechanics to describe activated processes, predicts a rate dependence of (ln(gamma))(1/2).

Experimental measures of affine and nonaffine deformation in granular shear

Through 2D granular Couette flow experiments, we probe failure and deformation of disordered solids under shear. Shear produces a mean azimuthal flow, smooth affine deformations, and irreversible so-called nonaffine particle displacements. We find that these processes are all of comparable magnitude and depend on the local shear rate. We compute the parameter of Falk and Langer characterizing nonaffine motion, Dmin2, and find that it is reasonably well described in terms of collections of single particles making locally nearly isotropic random steps, delta ri. Distributions for single particle nonaffine displacements, delta ri, satisfy P1(delta ri) proportional, variantexp[-|delta ri/Delta r|alpha] (alpha < or approximately 2).

Gas-driven subharmonic waves in a vibrated two-phase granular material

Vibrated powders exhibit striking phenomena: subharmonic waves, oscillons, convection, heaping, and even bubbling. We demonstrate novel rectangular profile subharmonic waves for vibrated granular material, that occur uniquely in the two-phase case of grains, and a fluid, such as air. These waves differ substantially from those for the gas-free case, exhibit different dispersion relations, and occur for specific shaking parameters and air pressure, understandable with gas-particle flow models. These waves occur when the gas diffusively penetrates the granular layer in a time comparable to the shaker period. As the pressure is lowered towards P =0, the granular-gas system exhibits a Knudsen regime. This instability provides an opportunity to quantitatively test models of two-phase flow.

Fluctuations, correlations and transitions in granular materials: statistical mechanics for a non-conventional system

In this work, we first review some general properties of dense granular materials. We are particularly concerned with a statistical description of these materials, and it is in this light that we briefly describe results from four representative studies. These are: experiment 1: determining local force statistics, vector forces, force distributions and correlations for static granular systems; experiment 2: characterizing the jamming transition, for a static two-dimensional system; experiment 3: characterizing plastic failure in dense granular materials; and experiment 4: a dynamical transition where the material 'freezes' in the presence of apparent heating for a sheared and shaken system.

Jamming transition in granular systems

Recent simulations have predicted that near jamming for collections of spherical particles, there will be a discontinuous increase in the mean contact number Z at a critical volume fraction phi(c). Above phi(c), Z and the pressure P are predicted to increase as power laws in phi-phi(c). In experiments using photoelastic disks we corroborate a rapid increase in Z at phi(c) and power-law behavior above phi(c) for Z and P. Specifically we find a power-law increase as a function of phi-phi(c) for Z-Z(c) with an exponent beta around 0.5, and for P with an exponent psi around 1.1. These exponents are in good agreement with simulations. We also find reasonable agreement with a recent mean-field theory for frictionless particles.

Effects of surface friction on a two-dimensional granular system: numerical model of a granular collider experiment

We present numerical results from a simulation of a granular collider experiment [B. Painter, M. Dutt, and R. P. Behringer, Physica D 175, 43 (2003)] using a numerical model which accounts for substrate frictional effects [M. Dutt and R. P. Behringer, Phys. Rev. E 70, 061304 (2004)]. We find the gradual birth and growth of a central cluster for the final state of the particles that depends on the system size, the substrate frictional dissipation, and the initial average kinetic energy. For systems where a central cluster is observed in the final state, the autocorrelation function C(r) of the interparticle spacing satisfies a Gaussian functional form C(r)=Ae-(r/sigma)2. We also find that the fluctuation speed distributions adhere to a Maxwell-Boltzmann distribution for times in the vicinity of collapse. Our results strongly indicate that the principal mechanism responsible for the energy and momentum dissipation is the particle-substrate kinetic friction. Our findings reiterate the importance of considering the effects of substrate friction in particle-substrate systems, as shown by the agreement between our numerical results with experimental findings of Painter, Dutt, and Behringer.

Contact force measurements and stress-induced anisotropy in granular materials

Interparticle forces in granular media form an inhomogeneous distribution of filamentary force chains. Understanding such forces and their spatial correlations, specifically in response to forces at the system boundaries, represents a fundamental goal of granular mechanics. The problem is of relevance to civil engineering, geophysics and physics, being important for the understanding of jamming, shear-induced yielding and mechanical response. Here we report measurements of the normal and tangential grain-scale forces inside a two-dimensional system of photoelastic disks that are subject to pure shear and isotropic compression. Various statistical measures show the underlying differences between these two stress states. These differences appear in the distributions of normal forces (which are more rounded for compression than shear), although not in the distributions of tangential forces (which are exponential in both cases). Sheared systems show anisotropy in the distributions of both the contact network and the contact forces. Anisotropy also occurs in the spatial correlations of forces, which provide a quantitative replacement for the idea of force chains. Sheared systems have long-range correlations in the direction of force chains, whereas isotropically compressed systems have short-range correlations regardless of the direction.

From the stress response function (back) to the sand pile "dip"

We relate the pressure "dip" observed at the bottom of a sand pile prepared by successive avalanches to the stress profile obtained on sheared granular layers in response to a localized vertical overload. We show that, within a simple anisotropic elastic analysis, the skewness and the tilt of the response profile caused by shearing provide a qualitative agreement with the sand pile dip effect. We conclude that the texture anisotropy produced by the avalanches is in essence similar to that induced by a simple shearing --albeit tilted by the angle of repose of the pile. This work also shows that this response function technique could be very well adapted to probe the texture of static granular packing.

Slow drag in two-dimensional granular media

We study the drag force experienced by an object slowly moving at constant velocity through a two-dimensional granular material consisting of bidisperse disks. The drag force is dominated by force chain structures in the bulk of the system, thus showing strong fluctuations. We consider the effect of three important control parameters for the system: the packing fraction, the drag velocity and the size of the tracer particle. We find that the mean drag force increases as a power law (exponent of 1.5) in the reduced packing fraction, (gamma- gamma(c) ) / gamma(c) , as gamma passes through a critical packing fraction, gamma(c) . By comparison, the mean drag grows slowly (basically logarithmic) with the drag velocity, showing a weak rate dependence. We also find that the mean drag force depends nonlinearly on the diameter, a of the tracer particle when a is comparable to the surrounding particles' size. However, the system nevertheless exhibits strong statistical invariance in the sense that many physical quantities collapse onto a single curve under appropriate scaling: force distributions P (f) collapse with appropriate scaling by the mean force, the power spectra P (omega) collapse when scaled by the drag velocity, and the avalanche size and duration distributions collapse when scaled by the mean avalanche size and duration. We also show that the system can be understood using simple failure models, which reproduce many experimental observations. These observations include the following: a power law variation of the spectrum with frequency characterized by an exponent alpha=-2 , exponential distributions for both the avalanche size and duration, and an exponential fall-off at large forces for the force distributions. These experimental data and simulations indicate that fluctuations in the drag force seem to be associated with the force chain formation and breaking in the system. Moreover, our simulations suggest that the logarithmic increase of the mean drag force with rate can be accounted for if slow relaxation of the force chain networks is included.

Diffusion and mobility in a stirred dense granular material

We describe a probe of diffusivity (D) and mobility (B) for a dense 2D granular system. We introduce random motion by stirring, and characterize D by particle tracking. To measure B we measure the force needed to push a particle through the medium at fixed velocity, v, using three sizes of tracer particle. We find simple Brownian diffusion, but B depends strongly on v because the force needed to push a tracer through a sample is nearly independent of v. Data for D/B depend on the tracer particle size.

Effects of surface friction on a two-dimensional granular system: cooling bound system

Experiments performed by Phys. Rev. E 62, 2380 (2000)] on two-particle collisions and dynamics emphasized the importance of the role played by substrate friction, in particular kinetic friction, on the particle dynamics after collisions on a substrate. We present a numerical model which accounts for collisional and surface frictional dissipation and their influence on particle dynamics for a quasi-two-dimensional cooling initially dilute granular material. This model makes the simplifying assumption that the collision dynamics is determined solely by the incoming velocity and angular velocities of the colliding particles. We apply this model to a numerical simulation of a monolayer of monodisperse particles moving on a substrate, enclosed between inelastic walls. We find that surface friction-in particular, kinetic friction-plays a dominant role in determining the dynamics of quasi-two-dimensional multiparticle systems where the particles are in continuous contact with a substrate. Results from simulations performed for different system sizes indicate that surface friction and the inelastic walls lead to clustering of the particles in and near the vicinity of the walls. We find that the rate of decrease of average total kinetic energy is the highest when the majority of the particles have just collided and are experiencing kinetic frictional forces and torques. We also find from our calculations that, on average, particle-wall collisions lead to more dissipation than particle-particle collisions for a single particle for fixed restitutional parameters.

Transients in sheared granular matter

As dense granular materials are sheared, a shear band and an anisotropic force network form. The approach to steady-state behavior depends on the history of the packing and the existing force and contact network. We present experiments on shearing of dense granular matter in a 2D Couette geometry in which we probe the history and evolution of shear bands by measuring particle trajectories and stresses during transients. We find that when shearing is stopped and restarted in the same direction, steady-state behavior is immediately reached, in agreement with the typical assumption that the system is quasistatic. Although some relaxation of the force network is observed when shearing is stopped, quasistatic behavior is maintained because the contact network remains essentially unchanged. When the direction of shear is reversed, a transient occurs in which stresses initially decrease, changes in the force network reach further into the bulk, and particles far from the wheel become more mobile. This occurs because the force network is fragile to changes transverse to the force network established under previous shear; particles must rearrange before becoming jammed again, thereby providing resistance to shear in the reversed direction. The strong force network is re-established after displacing the shearing surface approximately equal 3d, where d is the mean grain diameter. Steady-state velocity profiles are reached after a shear of < or approximately equal 30 d. Particles immediately outside of the shear band move on average less than 1 diameter before becoming jammed again. We also examine particle rotation during this transient and find that mean particle spin decreases during the transient, which is related to the fact that grains are not interlocked as strongly.

Self-diffusion in dense granular shear flows

Diffusivity is a key quantity in describing velocity fluctuations in granular materials. These fluctuations are the basis of many thermodynamic and hydrodynamic models which aim to provide a statistical description of granular systems. We present experimental results on diffusivity in dense, granular shear flows in a two-dimensional Couette geometry. We find that self-diffusivities D are proportional to the local shear rate gamma; with diffusivities along the direction of the mean flow approximately twice as large as those in the perpendicular direction. The magnitude of the diffusivity is D approximately gamma;a(2), where a is the particle radius. However, the gradient in shear rate, coupling to the mean flow, and strong drag at the moving boundary lead to particle displacements that can appear subdiffusive or superdiffusive. In particular, diffusion appears to be superdiffusive along the mean flow direction due to Taylor dispersion effects and subdiffusive along the perpendicular direction due to the gradient in shear rate. The anisotropic force network leads to an additional anisotropy in the diffusivity that is a property of dense systems and has no obvious analog in rapid flows. Specifically, the diffusivity is suppressed along the direction of the strong force network. A simple random walk simulation reproduces the key features of the data, such as the apparent superdiffusive and subdiffusive behavior arising from the mean velocity field, confirming the underlying diffusive motion. The additional anisotropy is not observed in the simulation since the strong force network is not included. Examples of correlated motion, such as transient vortices, and Lévy flights are also observed. Although correlated motion creates velocity fields which are qualitatively different from collisional Brownian motion and can introduce nondiffusive effects, on average the system appears simply diffusive.

Comparing simulation and experiment of a 2D granular Couette shear device

We present experiments along with molecular-dynamics (MD) simulations of a two-dimensional (2D) granular material in a Couette cell undergoing slow shearing. The grains are disks confined between an inner, rotating wheel and a fixed outer ring. The simulation results are compared to experimental studies and quantitative agreement is found. Tracking the positions and orientations of individual particles allows us to obtain density distributions, velocity and particle rotation rates for the system. The key issue of this paper is to show the extent to which quantitative agreement between an experiment and MD simulations is possible. Besides many differences in model details and the experiment, the qualitative features are nicely reproduced. We discuss the quantitative agreement/disagreement, give possible reasons, and outline further research perspectives.

Logarithmic rate dependence of force networks in sheared granular materials

Many models of slow, dense granular flows assume that the internal stresses are independent of the shearing rate. In contrast, logarithmic rate dependence is found in solid-on-solid friction, geological settings and elsewhere. Here we investigate the rate dependence of stress in a slowly sheared two-dimensional system of photoelastic disks, in which we are able to determine forces on the granular scale. We find that the mean (time-averaged) stress displays a logarithmic dependence on the shear rate for plastic (irreversible) deformations. However, there is no perceivable dependence on the driving rate for elastic (reversible) deformations, such as those that occur under moderate repetitive compression. Increasing the shearing rate leads to an increase in the strength of the force network and stress fluctuations. Qualitatively, this behaviour resembles the changes associated with an increase in density. Increases in the shearing rate also lead to qualitative changes in the distributions of stress build-up and relaxation events. If shearing is suddenly stopped, stress relaxations occur with a logarithmic functional form over long timescales. This slow collective relaxation of the stress network provides a mechanism for rate-dependent strengthening.

Granular friction, Coulomb failure, and the fluid-solid transition for horizontally shaken granular materials

We present the results of an extensive series of experiments, molecular dynamics simulations, and models that address horizontal shaking of a layer of granular material. The goal of this work was to better understand the transition between the "fluid" and "solid" states of granular materials. In the experiments, the material-consisting of glass spheres, smooth and rough sand-was contained in a container of rectangular cross section, and subjected to horizontal shaking of the form x=A sin(omega(t)). The base of the container was porous, so that it was possible to reduce the effective weight of the sample by means of a vertical gas flow. The acceleration of the shaking could be precisely controlled by means of an accelerometer mounted onboard the shaker, plus feedback control and lockin detection. The relevant control parameter for this system was the dimensionless acceleration, Gamma=Aomega(2)/g, where g was the acceleration of gravity. As Gamma was varied, the layer underwent a backward bifurcation between a solidlike state that was stationary in the frame of the shaker and a fluidlike state that typically consisted of a sloshing layer of maximum depth H riding on top of a solid layer. That is, with increasing Gamma, the solid state made a transition to the fluid state at Gamma(cu) and once the system was in the fluid state, a decrease in Gamma left the system in the fluidized state until Gamma reached Gamma(cd)<Gamma(cu). In the fluidized state, the flow consisted of back and forth sloshing at the shaker frequency, plus a slower convective flow along the shaking direction and additionally in the horizontal direction transverse to the shaking direction. Molecular dynamics simulations show that the last of these flows is associated with shear and dilation at the vertical sidewalls. For Gamma<Gamma(cu) and in the solid state, there was a "gas" of free particles sliding on the surface of the material. These constituted much less than one layer's worth of particles in all cases. If these "sliders" were suppressed by placing a thin strip of plastic on the surface, the hysteresis was removed, and the transition to fluidization occurred at a slightly lower value than Gamma(cd) for the free surface case. The hysteresis was also suppressed if a vertical gas flow from the base was sufficient to support roughly 40% of the weight of the sample. Both the transition to the fluid state from the solid and the reverse transition from the fluid to the solid were characterized by similar divergent time scales. If Gamma was increased above Gamma(cu) by a fractional amount epsilon=(Gamma-Gamma(cu))/Gamma(cu), where epsilon was small, there was a characteristic time tau=Aepsilon(-beta) for the transition from solid to fluid to occur, where beta is 1.00+/-0.06. Similarly, if Gamma was decreased below Gamma(cd) in the fluidized state by an amount epsilon=(Gamma-Gamma(cd))/Gamma(cd), there was also a transient time tau=Bepsilon(-beta), where beta is again indistinguishable from 1.00. In addition, the amplitudes A and B are essentially identical. By placing a small "impurity" on top of the layer, consisting of a heavier particle, we found that the exponent beta varied as the impurity mass squared and changed by a factor of 3. A simple Coulomb friction model with friction coefficients mu(k)<mu(s) for the fluid and solid states predicts a reversible rather than hysteretic transition to the fluid state, similar to what we observe with the addition of the small overload from a plastic strip. In an improved model, we provide a relaxational mechanism that allows the friction coefficient to change continuously between the low and high values. This model produces the hysteresis seen in experiments.

Memory in two-dimensional heap experiments

The measurement of force distributions in sandpiles provides a useful way to test concepts and models of the way forces propagate within noncohesive granular materials. Recent theory [J.-P. Bouchaud, M.E. Cates, and P. Claudin, J. Phys. I 5, 639 (1995); M. E. Cates, J. P. Wittmer, J.-P. Bouchaud, and P. Claudin, Phil. Trans. Roy. Soc. 356, 2535 (1998)] by Bouchaud et al. implies that the internal structure of a heap (and therefore the force pathway) is a strong function of the construction history. In general, it is difficult to obtain information that could test this idea from three-dimensional granular experiments except at boundaries. However, two-dimensional systems, such as those used here, can yield information on forces and particle arrangements in the interior of a sample. We obtain position and force information through the use of photoelastic particles. These experiments show that the history of the heap formation has a dramatic effect on the arrangement of particles (texture) and a weaker but clear effect on the forces within the sample. Specifically, heaps prepared by pouring from a point source show strong anisotropy in the contact angle distribution. Depending on additional details, they show a stress dip near the center. Heaps formed from a broad source show relatively little contact angle anisotropy and no indication of a stress dip.

Footprints in sand: the response of a granular material to local perturbations

We experimentally determine ensemble-averaged responses of granular packings to point forces, and we compare these results to recent models for force propagation in a granular material. We use 2D granular arrays consisting of photoelastic particles: either disks or pentagons, thus spanning the range from ordered to disordered packings. A key finding is that spatial ordering of the particles is a key factor in the force response. Ordered packings have a propagative component that does not occur in disordered packings.

Substrate interactions, effects of symmetry breaking, and convection in a 2D horizontally shaken granular system

We describe experiments on a horizontally shaken [x = Asin(omegat)] single layer of hard spheres rolling on a nearly horizontal surface. We identify a novel substrate-mediated convective flow which occurs when the system is tilted slightly so that the weak gravitational force, g-->(eff), acting on the particles is not parallel to the driving direction. As the shaking amplitude is increased, the system progresses through four regimes: solid-flat, solid-inclined, convective, and disordered. The control parameter is the driving velocity, Aomega, rather than the usual Aomega(2) of vertically shaken 3D systems. At the onset of convection, the critical velocity is V(c) approximately sqrt[2g(eff)d].

Dynamics of two-particle granular collisions on a surface

We experimentally examine the dynamics of two-particle collisions occurring on a surface. We find that in two-particle collisions a standard coefficient of restitution model may not capture crucial dynamics of the system. Instead, for a typical collision, the particles involved slide relative to the substrate for a substantial time following the collision; during this time they experience very high frictional forces. The frictional forces lead to energy losses that are typically larger by a factor of 5-6 than the losses due to particle inelasticity. In addition, momentum can be transferred to the substrate, so that the momentum of the two particles is not necessarily conserved. Finally, we measure the angular momenta of particles immediately following the collision, and find that angular momentum can be lost to the substrate following the collision as well.

Memories in sand: experimental tests of construction history on stress distributions under sandpiles

We report experiments on piles of cohesionless granular materials showing the effect of construction history on static stress distributions. Stresses under piles are monitored by sensitive capacitive techniques. The piles are formed either by pouring granular material from a funnel with a small outlet (localized source), or from a large sieve (homogeneous rain). Localized sources yield stress profiles with a clear stress dip near the center of the pile; the homogeneous rain profiles have no stress dip. We show that the stress profiles scale linearly with the pile height. Experiments on wedge-shaped piles show similar but weaker effects.

Fluctuations in granular media

Dense slowly evolving or static granular materials exhibit strong force fluctuations even though the spatial disorder of the grains is relatively weak. Typically, forces are carried preferentially along a network of "force chains." These consist of linearly aligned grains with larger-than-average force. A growing body of work has explored the nature of these fluctuations. We first briefly review recent work concerning stress fluctuations. We then focus on a series of experiments in both two- and three-dimension [(2D) and (3D)] to characterize force fluctuations in slowly sheared systems. Both sets of experiments show strong temporal fluctuations in the local stress/force; the length scales of these fluctuations extend up to 10(2) grains. In 2D, we use photoelastic disks that permit visualization of the internal force structure. From this we can make comparisons to recent models and calculations that predict the distributions of forces. Typically, these models indicate that the distributions should fall off exponentially at large force. We find in the experiments that the force distributions change systematically as we change the mean packing fraction, gamma. For gamma's typical of dense packings of nondeformable grains, we see distributions that are consistent with an exponential decrease at large forces. For both lower and higher gamma, the observed force distributions appear to differ from this prediction, with a more Gaussian distribution at larger gamma and perhaps a power law at lower gamma. For high gamma, the distributions differ from this prediction because the grains begin to deform, allowing more grains to carry the applied force, and causing the distributions to have a local maximum at nonzero force. It is less clear why the distributions differ from the models at lower gamma. An exploration in gamma has led to the discovery of an interesting continuous or "critical" transition (the strengthening/softening transition) in which the mean stress is the order parameter, and the mean packing fraction, gamma, must be adjusted to a value gamma(c) to reach the "critical point." We also follow the motion of individual disks and obtain detailed statistical information on the kinematics, including velocities and particle rotations or spin. Distributions for the azimuthal velocity, V(theta), and spin, S, of the particles are nearly rate invariant, which is consistent with conventional wisdom. Near gamma(c), the grain motion becomes intermittent causing the mean velocity of grains to slow down. Also, the length of stress chains grows as gamma-->gamma(c). The 3D experiments show statistical rate invariance for the stress in the sense that when the power spectra and spectral frequencies of the stress time series are appropriately scaled by the shear rate, Omega, all spectra collapse onto a single curve for given particle and sample sizes. The frequency dependence of the spectra can be characterized by two different power laws, P proportional, variant omega(-alpha), in the high and low frequency regimes: alpha approximately 2 at high omega; alpha<2 at low omega. The force distributions computed from the 3D stress time series are at least qualitatively consistent with exponential fall-off at large stresses. (c) 1999 American Institute of Physics.