Snell's Law for Shear Zone Refraction in Granular Materials
arXiv:0904.4166 · doi:10.1103/PhysRevLett.103.108301
Abstract
We present experiments on slow shear flow in a split-bottom linear shear cell, filled with layered granular materials. Shearing through two different materials separated by a flat material boundary is shown to give narrow shear zones, which refract at the material boundary in accordance with Snell's law in optics. The shear zone is the one that minimizes the dissipation rate upon shearing, i.e.a manifestation of the principle of least dissipation. We have prepared the materials as to form a granular lens. Shearing through the lens is shown to give a very broad shear zone, which corresponds to fulfilling Snell's law for a continuous range of paths through the cell.
4 pages, 5 figures
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Cited by in corpus (4)
- Coexistence and Transition between Shear Zones in Slow Granular Flows
- An adaptive hierarchical domain decomposition method for parallel contact dynamics simulations of granular materials
- Reflection and Exclusion of Shear Zones in Inhomogeneous Granular Materials
- Gravity Governs Shear Localization in Confined Dense Granular Flows