2015/06/30 by Charles K. C. Lieou, Ahmed Elbanna, Ahmed E. Elbanna +3 · 40 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Environmental Science · Physics and Astronomy · #Acoustics #Amplitude #Composite material #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Granular material #Landslides and related hazards #Materials science #Mechanics #Optics #Physics #Shear (geology) #Slip (aerodynamics) #Thermodynamics #Vibration #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech #earthquake and tectonic studies #physics.geo-ph
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physreve.92.022209
published in Physical Review E 92(2), 022209 (American Physical Society) · 12 pages, 8 figures
arxiv created 2015/07/14 · openalex publication_date 2015/08/24 · arxiv updated 2015/09/30 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/06
We propose a theory of shear flow in dense granular materials. A key ingredient of the theory is an effective temperature that determines how the material responds to external driving forces such as shear stresses and vibrations. We show that, within our model, friction between grains produces stick-slip behavior at intermediate shear rates, even if the material is rate strengthening at larger rates. In addition, externally generated acoustic vibrations alter the stick-slip amplitude, or suppress stick-slip altogether, depending on the pressure and shear rate. We construct a phase diagram that indicates the parameter regimes for which stick-slip occurs in the presence and absence of acoustic vibrations of a fixed amplitude and frequency. These results connect the microscopic physics to macroscopic dynamics and thus produce useful information about a variety of granular phenomena, including rupture and slip along earthquake faults, the remote triggering of instabilities, and the control of friction in material processing.