2025/07/02 by Carmen Lee, Lori McCabe, Lee, Carmen L. +15
Engineering · #FOS: Physical sciences #Geotechnical Engineering and Soil Mechanics #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Mineral Processing and Grinding #Soft Condensed Matter (cond-mat.soft)
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.2507.01933
openalex publication_date 2025/07/02 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Photoelastic force imaging is an experimental technique whereby a birefringent granular material is imaged with a polariscope to characterize the internal stress state of a granular material. Photoelasticimetry is the only proven experimental technique that allows researchers to measure the shear and normal forces at every particle contact in a granular packing. In 2017, Kollmer et al. [Rev. Sci. Instrum. 88, 051808 (2017)] developed an open-source software to perform this analysis. Here, we present the next substantial update to this software package. The new version improves resolution and efficiency and substantially changes the software architecture. The structural changes better facilitate add-ons, modules, and future improvements to the performance, accessibility, and versatility of the tool. Besides updates to the core software, we introduce new infrastructure to support the ongoing development of software, documentation, and training materials. The full development team, software, and supporting resources are available at https://github.com/photoelasticity .