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arXiv · 2107.13927

Influence of Roughness on Granular Avalanches

Jie Zheng·Yi Xing·Ye Yuan·Zhifeng Li·Zhikun Zeng·Shuyang Zhang·Houfei Yuan·Hua Tong·Chengjie Xia·Walter Kob·Xiaoping Jia·Jie Zhang·Yujie Wang
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Abstract

Combining X-ray tomography with simultaneous shear force measurement, we investigate shear-induced granular avalanches using spherical particles with different surface roughness. We find that systems consisting of particles with large surface roughness display quasi-periodic avalanches interrupted by crackling-like small ones. In contrast, systems consisting of particles with small roughness display no detectable avalanches. The stress drop of quasi-periodic avalanche shows a linear relation with the correlation length of particle non-affine displacement, suggesting that roughness enhances inter-particle locking and hence particle-level dynamic correlation length. However, the nonaffine displacement is two orders of magnitude smaller than particle size, indicating that stress is mainly released on the length scale of roughness. The correlation length of non-affine displacements abruptly increases when a quasi-periodic avalanche occurs, suggesting that quasi-periodic avalanches can be interpreted as a spinodal nucleation event in a first-order phase transition.

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Jie Zheng, Yi Xing, Ye Yuan, Zhifeng Li, Zhikun Zeng, Shuyang Zhang, Houfei Yuan, Hua Tong, Chengjie Xia, Walter Kob, Xiaoping Jia, Jie Zhang, Yujie Wang. 2021-07-29. Influence of Roughness on Granular Avalanches. https://arxiv.org/abs/2107.13927

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