Slow relaxation and aging phenomena at nano-scale in granular materials

Abstract

Complex systems having metastable elements often demonstrate nearly log-time relaxations and a kind of aging: repeated stimuli weaken the system's relaxational response. Granular matter is known to exhibit a wealth of such behaviors, for which the role of thermal fluctuations is usually ignored. However, we demonstrate that the latter can pronouncedly affect contacting mesoscopic-scale asperities and be macroscopically observed via appropriate acoustic effects. We also propose a mechanism comprising slow relaxations and aging as intrinsic properties of a wide class of systems with metastable states.

5 pages, 4 figures

References in corpus (3)

• On relaxations and aging of various glasses
• Experimental evidence of ageing and slow restoration of the weak-contact configuration in tilted 3D granular packings
• Huge (but finite) time scales in slow relaxations: beyond simple aging

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• Slow dynamic nonlinearity in unconsolidated glass bead packs
• Grains unchained: local fluidization of a granular packing by focused ultrasound