2002/04/03 by Raul Cruz Hidalgo, Christian U. Grosse, Hidalgo, Raul Cruz +7
Physics and Astronomy · #Condensed Matter (cond-mat) #FOS: Physical sciences #cond-mat
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0204077
Submitted to PRL
arxiv created 2002/04/03 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
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 model 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.