No Arabic abstract
Using a system of repulsive, soft particles as a model for a jammed solid, we analyze its force network as characterized by the magnitude of the contact force between two particles, the local contact angle subtended between three particles, and the local coordination number. In particular, we measure the local contact angle distribution as a function of the magnitude of the local contact force. We find the suppression of small contact angles for locally larger contact forces, suggesting the existence of chain-like correlations in the locally larger contact forces. We couple this information with a coordination number-spin state mapping to arrive at a Potts spin model with frustration and correlated disorder to draw a potential connection between jammed solids (no quenched disorder) and spin glasses (quenched disorder). We use this connection to measure chaos due to marginality in the jammed system. In addition, we present the replica solution of the one-dimensional, long-range Potts glass as a potential toy building block for a jammed solid, where a sea of weakly interacting spins provide for long-range interactions along a chain-like backbone of more strongly interacting spins.
Force chains, which are quasi-linear self-organised structures carrying large stresses, are ubiquitous in jammed amorphous materials, such as granular materials, foams, emulsions or even assemblies of cells. Predicting where they will form upon mechanical deformation is crucial in order to describe the physical properties of such materials, but remains an open question. Here we demonstrate that graph neural networks (GNN) can accurately infer the location of these force chains in frictionless materials from the local structure prior to deformation, without receiving any information about the inter-particle forces. Once trained on a prototypical system, the GNN prediction accuracy proves to be robust to changes in packing fraction, mixture composition, amount of deformation, and the form of the interaction potential. The GNN is also scalable, as it can make predictions for systems much larger than those it was trained on. Our results and methodology will be of interest for experimental realizations of granular matter and jammed disordered systems, e.g. in cases where direct visualisation of force chains is not possible or contact forces cannot be measured.
Penrose tilings form lattices, exhibiting 5-fold symmetry and isotropic elasticity, with inhomogeneous coordination much like that of the force networks in jammed systems. Under periodic boundary conditions, their average coordination is exactly four. We study the elastic and vibrational properties of rational approximants to these lattices as a function of unit-cell size $N_S$ and find that they have of order $sqrt{N_S}$ zero modes and states of self stress and yet all their elastic moduli vanish. In their generic form obtained by randomizing site positions, their elastic and vibrational properties are similar to those of particulate systems at jamming with a nonzero bulk modulus, vanishing shear modulus, and a flat density of states.
We propose a `phase diagram for particulate systems that interact via purely repulsive contact forces, such as granular media and colloidal suspensions. We identify and characterize two distinct classes of behavior as a function of the input kinetic energy per degree of freedom $T_0$ and packing fraction deviation above and below jamming onset $Delta phi=phi - phi_J$ using numerical simulations of purely repulsive frictionless disks. Iso-coordinated solids (ICS) only occur above jamming for $Delta phi > Delta phi_c(T_0)$; they possess average coordination number equal to the isostatic value ($< z> = z_{rm iso}$) required for mechanically stable packings. ICS display harmonic vibrational response, where the density of vibrational modes from the Fourier transform of the velocity autocorrelation function is a set of sharp peaks at eigenfrequencies $omega_k^d$ of the dynamical matrix evaluated at $T_0=0$. Hypo-coordinated solids (HCS) occur both above and below jamming onset within the region defined by $Delta phi > Delta phi^*_-(T_0)$, $Delta phi < Delta phi^*_+(T_0)$, and $Delta phi > Delta phi_{cb}(T_0)$. In this region, the network of interparticle contacts fluctuates with $< z> approx z_{rm iso}/2$, but cage-breaking particle rearrangements do not occur. The HCS vibrational response is nonharmonic, {it i.e} the density of vibrational modes $D(omega)$ is not a collection of sharp peaks at $omega_k^d$, and its precise form depends on the measurement method. For $Delta phi > Delta phi_{cb}(T_0)$ and $Delta phi < Delta phi^*_{-}(T_0)$, the system behaves as a hard-particle liquid.
The mechanical and transport properties of jammed materials originate from an underlying per- colating network of contact forces between the grains. Using extensive simulations we investigate the force-percolation transition of this network, where two particles are considered as linked if their interparticle force overcomes a threshold. We show that this transition belongs to the random percolation universality class, thus ruling out the existence of long-range correlations between the forces. Through a combined size and pressure scaling for the percolative quantities, we show that the continuous force percolation transition evolves into the discontinuous jamming transition in the zero pressure limit, as the size of the critical region scales with the pressure.
Memory encoding by cyclic shear is a reliable process to store information in jammed solids, yet its underlying mechanism and its connection to the amorphous structure are not fully understood. When a jammed sphere packing is repeatedly sheared with cycles of the same strain amplitude, it optimizes its mechanical response to the cyclic driving and stores a memory of it. We study memory by cyclic shear training as a function of the underlying stability of the amorphous structure in marginally stable and highly stable packings, the latter produced by minimizing the potential energy using both positional and radial degrees of freedom. We find that jammed solids need to be marginally stable in order to store a memory by cyclic shear. In particular, highly stable packings store memories only after overcoming brittle yielding and the cyclic shear training takes place in the shear band, a region which we show to be marginally stable.