Evolution of percolating force chains in compressed granular media [article]

Raul Cruz Hidalgo, Christian U. Grosse, Ferenc Kun, Hans W. Reinhardt,, Hans J. Herrmann
2002 arXiv   pre-print
The evolution of effective force chains percolating through a compressed granular system is investigated. We performed experiments by compressing an ensemble of spherical particles in a cylindrical container monitoring the macroscopic constitutive behavior and the acoustic signals emitted by microscopic rearrangements of particles. As a novel approach, we applied the continuous damage model of fiber bundles to describe the evolution of the array of force chains during the loading process. The
more » ... del provides a nonlinear constitutive behavior in good quantitative agreement with the experimental results. For a system of hard particles the model predicts a universal power law divergence of stress when approaching a critical deformation. The amplitude distribution of acoustic signals was found experimentally to follow a power law with exponent δ = 1.15 ± 0.05 which is in a good agreement with the analytic solution of the model.
arXiv:cond-mat/0204077v1 fatcat:kpxwchv3n5aqlji5gjtjkamkby