Acoustic Probing of the Jamming Transition in an Unconsolidated Granular Medium

Abstract

Experiments with acoustic waves guided along the mechanically free surface of an unconsolidated granular packed structure provide information on the elasticity of granular media at very low pressures that are naturally controlled by the gravitational acceleration and the depth beneath the surface. Comparison of the determined dispersion relations for guided surface acoustic modes with a theoretical model reveals the dependencies of the elastic moduli of the granular medium on pressure. The experiments confirm recent theoretical predictions that relaxation of the disordered granular packing through non-affine motion leads to a peculiar scaling of shear rigidity with pressure near the jamming transition corresponding to zero pressure. Unexpectedly, and in disagreement with the most of the available theories, the bulk modulus depends on pressure in a very similar way to the shear modulus.

References in corpus (5)

• Jamming at Zero Temperature and Zero Applied Stress: the Epitome of Disorder
• The Jamming Transition in Granular Systems
• On the Rigidity of Amorphous Solids
• Critical scaling in linear response of frictionless granular packings near jamming
• Force Mobilization and Generalized Isostaticity in Jammed Packings of Frictional Grains

Cited by in corpus (8)

• Jamming of Soft Particles: Geometry, Mechanics, Scaling and Isostaticity
• Scaling of phononic transport with connectivity in amorphous solids
• Locally resonant metasurfaces for shear waves in granular media
• Experimental study of the jamming transition at zero temperature
• Evidence of Raleigh-Hertz surface waves and shear stiffness anomaly in granular media
• Mitigation of Rayleigh-like waves in granular media via multi-layer resonant metabarriers
• Packing structure of a two-dimensional granular system through the jamming transition
• Drastic slowdown of shear waves in unjammed granular suspensions