No Arabic abstract
In order to understand the nature of friction in closely-packed granular materials, a discrete element simulation on granular layers subjected to isobaric plain shear is performed. It is found that the friction coefficient increases as the power of the shear rate, the exponent of which does not depend on the material constants. Using a nondimensional parameter that is known as the inertial number, the power-law can be cast in a generalized form so that the friction coefficients at different confining pressures collapse on the same curve. We show that the volume fraction also obeys a power-law.
We present experiments on slow shear flow in a split-bottom linear shear cell, filled with layered granular materials. Shearing through two different materials separated by a flat material boundary is shown to give narrow shear zones, which refract at the material boundary in accordance with Snells law in optics. The shear zone is the one that minimizes the dissipation rate upon shearing, i.e.a manifestation of the principle of least dissipation. We have prepared the materials as to form a granular lens. Shearing through the lens is shown to give a very broad shear zone, which corresponds to fulfilling Snells law for a continuous range of paths through the cell.
Based on discrete element method simulations, we propose a new form of the constitution equation for granular flows independent of packing fraction. Rescaling the stress ratio $mu$ by a power of dimensionless temperature $Theta$ makes the data from a wide set of flow geometries collapse to a master curve depending only on the inertial number $I$. The basic power-law structure appears robust to varying particle properties (e.g. surface friction) in both 2D and 3D systems. We show how this rheology fits and extends frameworks such as kinetic theory and the Nonlocal Granular Fluidity model.
The interplay between Coulomb friction and random excitations is studied experimentally by means of a rotating probe in contact with a stationary granular gas. The granular material is independently fluidized by a vertical shaker, acting as a heat bath for the Brownian-like motion of the probe. Two ball bearings supporting the probe exert nonlinear Coulomb friction upon it. The experimental velocity distribution of the probe, autocorrelation function, and power spectra are compared with the predictions of a linear Boltzmann equation with friction, which is known to simplify in two opposite limits: at high collision frequency, it is mapped to a Fokker-Planck equation with nonlinear friction, whereas at low collision frequency, it is described by a sequence of independent random kicks followed by friction-induced relaxations. Comparison between theory and experiment in these two limits shows good agreement. Deviations are observed at very small velocities, where the real bearings are not well modeled by Coulomb friction.
Using cyclic shear to drive a two dimensional granular system, we determine the structural characteristics for different inter-particle friction coefficients. These characteristics are the result of a competition between mechanical stability and entropy, with the latters effect increasing with friction. We show that a parameter-free maximum-entropy argument alone predicts an exponential cell order distribution, with excellent agreement with the experimental observation. We show that friction only tunes the mean cell order and, consequently, the exponential decay rate and the packing fraction. We further show that cells, which can be very large in such systems, are short-lived, implying that our systems are liquid-like rather than glassy.
We employ numerical simulations to understand the evolution of elastic standing waves in disordered frictional disk systems, where the dispersion relations of rotational sound modes are analyzed in detail. As in the case of frictional particles on a lattice, the rotational modes exhibit an optical-like dispersion relation in the high frequency regime, representing a shoulder of the vibrational density of states and fast oscillations of the autocorrelations of rotational velocities. A lattice-based model describes the dispersion relations of the rotational modes for small wave numbers. The rotational modes are perfectly explained by the model if tangential elastic forces between the disks in contact are large enough. If the tangential forces are comparable with or smaller than normal forces, the model fails for short wave lengths. However, the dispersion relation of the rotational modes then follows the model prediction for transverse modes, implying that the fast oscillations of disks rotations switch to acoustic sound behavior. We evidence such a transition of the rotational modes by analyzing the eigen vectors of disordered frictional disks and identify upper and lower limits of the frequency-bands. We find that those are not reversed over the whole range of tangential stiffness as a remarkable difference from the rotational sound in frictional particles on a lattice.