2020/07/31 by Xulai Sun, Walter Kob, Raphaël Blumenfeld +4 · 37 citations
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Engineering · Materials Science · Mathematics · Physics and Astronomy · #Composite material #Entropy (arrow of time) #Exponential function #Exponential growth #Granular flow and fluidized beds #Granular material #High-pressure geophysics and materials #Instability #Material Dynamics and Properties #Materials science #Mathematical analysis #Mathematics #Mechanics #Physics #Statistical physics #Thermodynamics #cond-mat.soft #cond-mat.stat-mech
paper · pdf · doi:10.1103/physrevlett.125.268005
published in Physical Review Letters 125(26), 268005 (American Physical Society)
arxiv created 2020/12/16 · openalex publication_date 2020/12/31 · arxiv updated 2021/01/06 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/08/05
Using cyclic shear to drive a two-dimensional granular system, we determine the structural characteristics for different interparticle friction coefficients. These characteristics are the result of a competition between mechanical stability and entropy, with the latter's effect increasing with friction. We show that a parameter-free maximum-entropy argument alone predicts an exponential cell order distribution, with excellent agreement with the experimental observation. We show that friction only tunes the mean cell order and, consequently, the exponential decay rate and the packing fraction. We further show that cells, which can be very large in such systems, are short-lived, implying that our systems are liquidlike rather than glassy.