2004/09/30 by Srdjan Ostojic, Debabrata Panja
Engineering · Materials Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Material Dynamics and Properties #Theoretical and Computational Physics #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1088/1742-5468/2005/01/p01011
published as J. Stat. Mech. (2005) P01011 · Accepted for publication in JStat; 33 pages, 10 figures; Section 2.2 reorganized and rewritten; Details about the simulation procedure added in Sec.3.1. ; A new section, summarizing the final results and the calculation procedure added
arxiv created 2005/01/12 · openalex publication_date 2005/02/01 · arxiv updated 2009/12/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/30
We study the response of a two-dimensional hexagonal packing of massless, rigid, frictionless spherical grains due to a vertically downward point force on a single grain in the top layer. We use a statistical approach, where each mechanically stable configuration of contact forces is equally likely. We show that this problem is equivalent to a correlated q -model. We find that the response is double peaked, where the two peaks, sharp and single-grain-diameter wide, lie on the two downward lattice directions emanating from the point of application of the external force. For systems of finite size, the magnitude of these peaks decreases towards the bottom of the packing, while progressively a broader, central maximum appears between the peaks. The response behaviour displays a remarkable scaling behaviour with system size N : while the response in the bulk of the packing scales as 1/ N , on the boundary it is independent of N , so in the thermodynamic limit only the peaks on the lattice directions persist. This qualitative behaviour is extremely robust, as demonstrated by our simulation results with different boundary conditions. We have obtained exact expressions for the response and higher correlations for any system size in terms of integers corresponding to an underlying discrete structure.