An experimental investigation of the force network ensemble

Abstract

We present an experiment in which a horizontal quasi-2D granular system with a fixed neighbor network is cyclically compressed and decompressed over 1000 cycles. We remove basal friction by floating the particles on a thin air cushion, so that particles only interact in-plane. As expected for a granular system, the applied load is not distributed uniformly, but is instead concentrated in force chains which form a network throughout the system. To visualize the structure of these networks, we use particles made from photoelastic material. The experimental setup and a new data-processing pipeline allow us to map out the evolution subject to the cyclic compressions. We characterize several statistical properties of the packing, including the probability density function of the contact force, and compare them with theoretical and numerical predictions from the force network ensemble theory.

accepted for publication in the conference proceedings of Powders and Grains 2017

References in corpus (5)

• Extraction of Force-Chain Network Architecture in Granular Materials Using Community Detection
• The Statistical Physics of Athermal Materials
• Soft Sphere Packings at Finite Pressure but Unstable to Shear
• Evolution of network architecture in a granular material under compression
• Topological and geometric measurements of force chain structure