2001/03/01 by S. Luding, Luding, S.
Engineering · Physics and Astronomy · #Dynamics and Control of Mechanical Systems #Geotechnical and Geomechanical Engineering #Granular flow and fluidized beds #cond-mat.mtrl-sci #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.48550/arxiv.cond-mat/0103016
8 pages, 9 figures
arxiv created 2001/03/01 · arxiv updated 2009/11/30
One essential question in material sciences is how to bridge the gap between the microscopic picture and a macroscopic description. The former involves contact forces and deformations, whereas the latter concerns tensorial quantities like the stress or the velocity gradient. A two-dimensional shear-cell filled with disks of different sizes is examined by means of a ``microscopic'' discrete element method (DEM). Applying a consistent averaging formalism, one can obtain scalar- and vector-fields as well as classical tensorial macroscopic quantities like fabric, stress or velocity gradient and, in addition, micropolar quantities like curvature or couple-stress.