Granular material
A granular material is a conglomeration of discrete solid, macroscopic particles characterized by a loss of energy whenever the particles interact. The constituents that compose granular material are large enough such that they are not subject to thermal motion fluctuations. Thus, the lower size limit for grains in granular material is about 1 μm. On the upper size limit, the physics of granular materials may be applied to ice floes where the individual grains are icebergs and to asteroid belts of the Solar System with individual grains being asteroids.
Some examples of granular materials are snow, nuts, coal, sand, rice, coffee, corn flakes, fertilizer, and bearing balls. Research into granular materials is thus directly applicable and goes back at least to Charles-Augustin de Coulomb, whose law of friction was originally stated for granular materials. Granular materials are commercially important in applications as diverse as pharmaceutical industry, agriculture, and energy production.
Powders are a special class of granular material due to their small particle size, which makes them more cohesive and more easily suspended in a gas.
The soldier/physicist Brigadier Ralph Alger Bagnold was an early pioneer of the physics of granular matter and whose book The Physics of Blown Sand and Desert Dunes remains an important reference to this day. According to material scientist Patrick Richard, "Granular materials are ubiquitous in nature and are the second-most manipulated material in industry ".
In some sense, granular materials do not constitute a single phase of matter but have characteristics reminiscent of solids, liquids, or gases depending on the average energy per grain. However, in each of these states granular materials also exhibit properties which are unique.
Granular materials also exhibit a wide range of pattern forming behaviors when excited. As such granular materials under excitation can be thought of as an example of a complex system.
Definitions
Granular Matter is a system composed of lots of macroscopic particles. Microscopic particles are described by all DOF of the system. Macroscopic particles are described only by DOF of the motion of each particle as a rigid body. In each particle are a lot of internal DOF. Consider inelastic collision between two particles - the energy from velocity as rigid body is transferred to microscopic internal DOF. We get “Dissipation” - irreversible heat generation. The result is that without external driving, eventually all particles will stop moving. In macroscopic particles thermals fluctuations are irrelevant.When a matter is dilute and dynamic then it is called granular gas and dissipation phenomenon dominates.
When a matter is dense and static, then it is called granular solid and jamming phenomenon dominates.
When the density is intermediate, then it is called granular liquid.
Static Behaviors
Coulomb Friction Law
regarded internal forces between granular particles as a friction process, and proposed the friction law, that the force of friction of solid particles is proportional to the normal pressure between them and the static friction coefficient is greater than the kinetic friction coefficient. He studied the collapse of piles of sand and found empirically two critical angles: the maximal stable angle and the minimum angle of repose.When the sandpile slope reaches the maximum stable angle, the sand particles on the surface of the pile begin to fall. The process stops when the surface inclination angle is equal to the angle of repose. The difference between these two angles,, is the Bagnold angle, which is a measure of the hysteresis of granular materials. This phenomenon is due to the force chains: stress in a granular solid is not distributed uniformly but is conducted away along so-called force chains which are networks of grains resting on one another. Between these chains are regions of low stress whose grains are shielded for the effects of the grains above by vaulting and arching. When the shear stress reaches a certain value, the force chains can break and the particles at the end of the chains on the surface begin to slide. Then, new force chains form until the shear stress is less than the critical value, and so the sandpile maintains a constant angle of repose.Janssen Effect
In 1895, H.A Janssen discovered that in a vertical cylinder filled with particles, the pressure measured at the base of the cylinder does not depend on the height of the filling, unlike Newtonian fluids at rest which follow Stevin's law. Janssen suggested a simplified model with the following assumptions:1) The vertical pressure,, is constant in the horizontal plane;
2) The horizontal pressure, , is proportional to the vertical pressure , where is constant in space;
3) The wall friction static coefficient sustains the vertical load at the contact with the wall;
4) The density of the material is constant over all depths.
The pressure in the granular material is then described in a different law, which accounts for saturation:where and is the radius of the cylinder, and at the top of the silo.
The given presure equation does not account for boundry conditions, such as the ratio between the particle size to the radius of the silo. Since the internal stress of the material cannot be measured, Janssen's speculations have not been verified by any direct experiment.
Rowe Stress - Dilatancy Relation
In the early 1960s, Rowe studied dilatancy effect on shear strength in shear tests and proposed a relation between them.The mechanical properties of assembly of mono-dispersed particles in 2D can by analyzed based on the representative elementary volume, with typical lengths,, in vertical and horizontal directions respectively. The geometric characteristics of the system is described by and the variable, which describes the angle when the contact points begin the process of sliding. Denote by the vertical direction, which is the direction of the major principal stress, and by the horizontal direction, which is the direction of the minor principal stress.
Then stress on the boundry can be expressed as the concentrated force borne by individual particals. Under biaxial loading with uniform stress and therefore.
At equilibrium state:
where , the friction angle, is the angle between the contact force and the contact normal direction.
, which describes the angle that if the tangential force falls within the friction cone the particles would still remain steady. It is determined by the coefficient of friction, so. Once stress is applied to the system then gradually increases while remains unchanged. When then the particles will begin sliding, resulting in changing the structure of the system and creating new force chains.,the horizontal and vertical displacements respectively satisfies:
Granular gases
If the granular material is driven harder such that contacts between the grains become highly infrequent, the material enters a gaseous state. Correspondingly, one can define a granular temperature equal to the root mean square of grain velocity fluctuations that is analogous to thermodynamic temperature.Unlike conventional gases, granular materials will tend to cluster and clump due to the dissipative nature of the collisions between grains. This clustering has some interesting consequences. For example, if a partially partitioned box of granular materials is vigorously shaken then grains will over time tend to collect in one of the partitions rather than spread evenly into both partitions as would happen in a conventional gas. This effect, known as the granular Maxwell's demon, does not violate any thermodynamics principles since energy is constantly being lost from the system in the process.
Ulam Model
Consider N particles each has energy. at some constant rate per unit time, randomly choose two particles with energies and compute the sum. Now, randomly distribute the total energy between the two particles: choose randomly so that the first particle, after the collision, has energy, and the second.the stochastic evolution equation:where is the collision rate, is randomly picked from and j is an index also randomly chosen from a uniform distribution. The average energy per particle:
The second moment:
Now the time derivative of the second moment:
In steady state:
Solving the differential equation for the second moment:
However, instead of characterizing the moments, we can analytically solve the energy distribution, from the moment generating function. Consider the Laplace transform:.
Where, and
the n derivative:
now:
Solving for with change of variables :
We will show that by taking its' Laplace transform and calculate the generating function:
Jamming transition
Granular systems are known to exhibit jamming and undergo a jamming transition which is thought of as a thermodynamic phase transition to a jammed state.The trasition is from fluid-like phase to a solid-like phase and it is controlled by temprature,, volume fraction,, and shear stress,. The normal phase diagram of glass transition is in the plane and it is divided into a jammed state region and unjammed liquid state by a transition line. The phase diagram for granular matter lies in the plane, and the critical stress curve divides the state phase to jammed\unjammed region, which corresponds to granular solids\liquids respectively. For isotropically jamed granular system, when is reduced around a certain point,,the bulk and shear moduli approach 0. The point corresponds to the critical volume fraction. Define the distance to point, the critical volume fraction,. The behavior of granular systems near the point was empirically found to resemble second-order transition: the bulk modulus shows a power law scaling with and there are some divergent characteristics lengths when approaches zero. While is constant for an infinite system, for a finite system boundry effects result in a distribution of over some range.
The Lubachevsky-Stillinger algorithm of jamming allows one to produce simulated jammed granular configurations.
Pattern formation
Excited granular matter is a rich pattern-forming system. Some of the pattern-forming behaviours seen in granular materials are:- The un-mixing or segregation of unlike grains under vibration and flow. An example of this is the so-called Brazil nut effect where Brazil nuts rise to the top of a packet of mixed nuts when shaken.The cause of this effect is that when shaken, granular materials move in a circular pattern. some larger materials get stuck while going down the circle and therefore stay on the top.
- The formation of structured surface or bulk patterns in vibrated granular layers. These patterns include but are not limited to stripes, squares and hexagons. These patterns are thought to be formed by fundamental excitations of the surface known as oscillons. The formation of ordered volumetric structures in granular materials is known as Granular Crystallisation, and involves a transition from a random packing of particles to an ordered packing such as hexagonal close-packed or body-centred cubic. This is most commonly observed in granular materials with narrow size distributions and uniform grain morphology.
- The formation of sand ripples, dunes, and sandsheets
There are two main computational approaches to such simulations, time-stepped and event-driven, the former being the most efficient for a higher density of the material and the motions of a lower intensity, and the latter for a lower density of the material and the motions of a higher intensity.