arXiv subjects

Tejas G. Murthy

Publications and source records attributed to Tejas G. Murthy.

4 recordsLinked to original sources

arXiv2026

Topological constraints suppress shear localization in granular chain ensembles

Entangled granular systems exhibit mechanical rigidity and resistance to deformation, reminiscent of cohesive materials, due to their reduced degrees of freedom and contact friction. A quantitative understanding of how classical granular phenomena, such as shear localization and plastic flow, appear in such geometrically cohesive systems remains unknown. Here, we investigate this using granular chain ensembles subjected to direct shear tests. Our experiments reveal that chains longer than four beads exhibit pronounced shear hardening, which is nearly independent of the applied normal stress and is accompanied by the complete suppression of shear localization. The volume dilation of the long chain ensembles also does not vanish in the steady state. We complement this phenomenology, which is distinct from that of typical frictional granular ensembles, with DEM simulations. The simulations reveal that tensile forces are generated due to particles being locally jammed, characterized by a high non-covalent coordination number. Consequently, this leads to a deformation that shows a very diffuse region of localization and enhanced shear hardening. Overall, our study highlights that granular chains provide a systematic route to map how connectivity constraints impact flow properties and mechanical rigidity.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Micromechanics of compressive and tensile forces in partially-bonded granular materials

In granular media, the presence of even small amounts of interparticle cohesion manifests as an increase in the bulk strength and stiffness, effects that are typically associated with an increase in the average number of constraints per particle. By performing an ensemble of isotropic compression experiments, all starting from the same initial particle configuration but with varying fraction of bonded particles, we use photoelastic force measurements to identify the causes of this phenomenon at the particle-scale and meso-scale. As a function of the percentage of bonded particles, we measure a small decrease in the critical packing fraction at which jamming occurs. Above jamming, the local pressure increases predominantly for the bonded particles, measured relative to the unbonded case, through approximately equal contributions of both tensile and compressive forces. Histograms of the magnitude of the interparticle forces become broader for systems with more bonded particles. We measure both pressure and coordination number as a function of distance from a bonded dimer, both of which are locally enhanced for nearest neighbors, indicating that dimers appear to act as areas of concentrated force and connectivity that improve rigidity.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2025

Extracting Contact Forces in Cohesive Granular Ensembles

Interparticle cohesion is prevalent in stored powders, geological formations, and infrastructure engineering, yet a comprehensive understanding of the effects of its micro-mechanics on bulk properties has not been established experimentally. One challenge has been that while photoelasticy has been widely and successfully used to measure the vector contact forces within dry granular systems, where the particle-particle interactions are solely frictional and compressive in nature, it has seen little development in systems where tensile forces are present. The key difficulty has been the inability to distinguish between compressive and tensile forces, which appear identically within the photoelastic response. Here, we present a novel approach which solves this problem, by an extension to the open-source PeGS (Photoelastic Grain Solver) software available at https://github.com/photoelasticity. Our new implementation divides the procedure of finding vector contact forces into two steps: first evaluating the vector contact forces on the non-cohesive particles present in the ensemble, followed by using an equilibrium constraint to solve for the forces in the bonded particles. We find that in the dilute limit, for up to 25% bonded dimers, we can solve for all forces since each particle has only one force bearing contact that can potentially transmit tensile forces. While the case of dimers is an idealised version of cohesive granular ensemble, it provides an important first step towards experimentally studying the micro-mechanics of cohesive granular materials.

cond-mat.soft↗

arXiv2015

Kinematic flow patterns in slow deformation of a dense granular material

The kinematic flow pattern in slow deformation of a model dense granular medium is studied at high resolution using \emph{in situ} imaging, coupled with particle tracking. The deformation configuration is indentation by a flat punch under macroscopic plane-strain conditions. Using a general analysis method, velocity gradients and deformation fields are obtained from the disordered grain arrangement, enabling flow characteristics to be quantified. The key observations are the formation of a stagnation zone, as in dilute granular flow past obstacles; occurrence of vortices in the flow immediately underneath the punch; and formation of distinct shear bands adjoining the stagnation zone. The transient and steady state stagnation zone geometry, as well as the strength of the vortices and strain rates in the shear bands, are obtained from the experimental data. All of these results are well-reproduced in exact-scale Non-Smooth Contact Dynamics (NSCD) simulations. Full 3D numerical particle positions from the simulations allow extraction of flow features that are extremely difficult to obtain from experiments. Three examples of these, namely material free surface evolution, deformation of a grain column below the punch and resolution of velocities inside the primary shear band, are highlighted. The variety of flow features observed in this model problem also illustrates the difficulty involved in formulating a complete micromechanical analytical description of the deformation.

cond-mat.soft↗