Jamming I: A volume function for jammed matter

We introduce a “Hamiltonian”-like function, called the volume function, indispensable to describe the ensemble of jammed matter such as granular materials and emulsions from a geometrical point of view. The volume function represents the available volume of each particle in the jammed systems. At the microscopic level, we show that the volume function is the Voronoi volume associated to each particle and in turn we provide an analytical formula for the Voronoi volume in terms of the contact network, valid for any dimension. We then develop a statistical theory for the probability distribution of the volumes in 3d to calculate an average volume function coarse-grained at a mesoscopic level. The salient result is the discovery of a mesoscopic volume function inversely proportional to the coordination number. Our analysis is the first step toward the calculation of macroscopic observables and equations of state using the statistical mechanics of jammed matter, when supplemented by the condition of mechanical equilibrium of jamming that properly defines jammed matter at the ensemble level.     

Jamming III: Characterizing randomness via the entropy of jammed matter

The nature of randomness in disordered packings of frictional and frictionless spheres is investigated using theory and simulations of identical spherical grains. The entropy of the packings is defined through the force and volume ensemble of jammed matter and this is shown to be difficult to calculate analytically. A mesoscopic ensemble of isostatic states is then utilized in an effort to predict the entropy through the definition of a volume function that is dependent on the coordination number. Equations of state are obtained relating entropy, volume fraction and compactivity characterizing the different states of jammed matter, and elucidating the phase diagram for jammed granular matter. Analytical calculations are compared to numerical simulations using volume fluctuation analysis and graph theoretical methods, with reasonable agreement. The entropy of the jammed system reveals that random loose packings are more disordered than random close packings, allowing for an unambiguous interpretation of both limits. Ensemble calculations show that the entropy vanishes at random close packing (RCP), while numerical simulations show that a finite entropy remains in the microscopic states at RCP. The notion of a negative compactivity, which explores states with volume fractions below those achievable by existing simulation protocols, is also explored, expanding the equations of state. The mesoscopic theory reproduces the simulations results in shape well, though a difference in magnitude implies that the entire entropy of the packing may not be captured by the methods presented herein. We discuss possible extensions to the present mesoscopic approach describing packings from random loose packing (RLP) to RCP to the ordered branch of the equation of state in an effort to understand the entropy of jammed matter in the full range of densities from RLP to face-centered cubic (FCC) packing.     

阻塞态颗粒介质的慢速阻力

报导了不同尺寸的大球缓慢压入颗粒床过程中所受阻力随深度变化的实验测量结果,发现阻力曲线在不同的深度区域有不同的增长规律,存在凹—凸转变.阻力在较浅的区域满足1.3次方的幂率增长,而在较深的区域趋向0.3次方的幂率增长.通过研究凹凸转变中拐点的性质,发现这种阻力增长速度趋缓的转变不是来源于前人认为的器壁支撑导致的介质压强饱和,而是来源于侵入物自身的体积效应.此外,适用于颗粒介质快速阻力的静水压力描述并不适用于阻塞态颗粒介质的慢速阻力行为,实验表明慢速阻力对深度的依赖关系不是线性,且测得的静水压力系数也远大于理论估算值. 关键词： 颗粒介质 阻力 力链重组     

Asymmetric response of a jammed plastic bead raft

The successful development of an effective temperature would be an important step in the application of statistical mechanics principles to systems driven far from equilibrium. One direction that has shown promise is the use of fluctuation-dissipation relations. However, driven systems break time-reversal symmetry, and understanding the implications of this for fluctuation-dissipation relations is a critical step in developing effective temperatures. Here we study the response function in a driven system of plastic beads as a function of the density in order to elucidate the generality of the use of fluctuation-dissipation relations. We find that even when a linear response is observed, the time scale of the response is dependent on the direction of the applied stress.     

Physical origin of shear-banding in jammed systems

Jammed systems all have a yield stress. Among these materials some have been shown to shear-band but it is as yet unclear why some materials develop shear-band and some others do not. In order to rationalize existing data concerning the flow characteristics of jammed systems and in particular understand the physical origin of such a difference, we propose a simple approach for describing the steady flow behaviour of yield stress fluids, which retains only basic physical ingredients. Within this framework we show that in the liquid regime the behaviour of jammed systems turns from that of a simple yield stress fluid (exhibiting homogeneous flows) to a shear-banding material when the ratio of a characteristic relaxation time of the system to a restructuring time becomes smaller than 1, thus suggesting a possible physical origin of these trends.     

Entropy, baryon asymmetry and dark matter from heavy neutrino decays

The origin of the hot phase of the early universe remains so far an unsolved puzzle. A viable option is entropy production through the decays of heavy Majorana neutrinos whose lifetimes determine the initial temperature. We show that baryogenesis and the production of dark matter are natural by-products of this mechanism. As is well known, the cosmological baryon asymmetry can be accounted for by leptogenesis for characteristic neutrino mass parameters. We find that thermal gravitino production then automatically yields the observed amount of dark matter, for the gravitino as the lightest superparticle and typical gluino masses. As an example, we consider the production of heavy Majorana neutrinos in the course of tachyonic preheating associated with spontaneous B−L breaking. A quantitative analysis leads to constraints on the superparticle masses in terms of neutrino masses: For a light neutrino mass of ¹⁰−5 eV the gravitino mass can be as small as 200 MeV, whereas a lower neutrino mass bound of 0.01 eV implies a lower bound of 9 GeV on the gravitino mass. The measurement of a light neutrino mass of 0.1 eV would rule out heavy neutrino decays as the origin of entropy, visible and dark matter.     

Force indeterminacy in the jammed state of hard disks

Granular packings of hard disks are investigated by means of contact dynamics which is an appropriate technique to explore the allowed force realizations in the space of contact forces. Configurations are generated for given friction coefficients, and then an ensemble of equilibrium forces is found for fixed contacts. We study the force fluctuations within this ensemble. In the limit of zero friction, the fluctuations vanish in accordance with the isostaticity of the packing. The magnitude of the fluctuations has a nonmonotonous friction dependence. The increase for small friction can be attributed to the opening of the angle of the Coulomb cone, while the decrease as friction increases is due to the reduction of connectivity of the contact network, leading to local, independent clusters of indeterminacy. We discuss the relevance of indeterminacy to packings of deformable particles and to the mechanical response properties.     

Unexpected density fluctuations in jammed disordered sphere packings

We computationally study jammed disordered hard-sphere packings as large as a million particles. We show that the packings are saturated and hyperuniform, i.e., that local density fluctuations grow only as a logarithmically augmented surface area rather than the volume of the window. The structure factor shows an unusual nonanalytic linear dependence near the origin, S(k) approximately |k|. In addition to exponentially damped oscillations seen in liquids, this implies a weak power-law tail in the total correlation function, h(r) approximately -r(-4), and a long-ranged direct correlation function c(r).     

Repulsive contact interactions make jammed particulate systems inherently nonharmonic

Many jammed particulate systems, such as granular and colloidal materials, interact via repulsive contact forces. We find that these systems possess no harmonic regime in the large system limit (N→∞) for all compressions Δ? studied, and at jamming onset Δ?→0 for all N. We perform fixed energy simulations following perturbations with amplitude δ along eigendirections of the dynamical matrix. The fluctuations abruptly spread to all modes for δ≈δ(c) (where a single contact breaks) in contrast to linear and weakly nonlinear behavior. For δ > δ(c), all discrete modes disappear into a continuous frequency band. <δ(c)> scales with 1/N and Δ?, which limits harmonic behavior to only overcompressed systems. The density of vibrational modes deviates strongly from that predicted from the dynamical matrix when the system enters the nonharmonic regime, which significantly affects its mechanical and transport properties.     

Complex force network in marginally and deeply jammed solids

This paper studies the force network properties of marginally and deeply jammed packings of frictionless soft particlesfrom the perspective of complex network theory. We generate zero-temperature granular packings at different pressures by minimizing the inter-particle potential energy. The force networks are constructed as nodes representing particles and links representing normal forces between the particles. Deeply jammed solids show remarkably different behavior from marginally jammed solids in their degree distribution, strength distribution, degree correlation, and clustering coefficient. Bimodal and multi-modal distributions emerge when the system enters the deep jamming region. The results also show that small and large particles can show different correlation behavior in this simple system.     

双分散颗粒体系在临界堵塞态的结构特征

堵塞行为是颗粒体系中一种常见的现象,其力学性质与堆积结构的关联非常复杂.本文采用离散元法研究了由两种不同半径颗粒组成的二维双分散无摩擦球形颗粒体系在临界堵塞态所呈现的结构特征,讨论了大小颗粒粒径比与大颗粒百分比对临界堵塞态的影响.数值模拟结果表明,当粒径比小于1.4时,临界平均接触数与大颗粒百分比关系不大,当粒径比大于1.4时随着大颗粒百分比的增大临界平均接触数先减小再增大.而临界体积分数在粒径比小于1.8时随着大颗粒百分比的增加先减小后增大,大于1.8时又基本不随大颗粒百分比而变化.大颗粒百分比在接近0或1时,系统近似为单分散体系,临界平均接触数与体积分数基本不随半径比的增大而变化;在接近0.5时,临界平均接触数随着半径比的增大逐渐减小,而临界体积分数则是先减小后增大.文中对大-小颗粒这一接触类型的百分比也进行了探讨,其值随着大颗粒百分比的增大呈二次函数的变化趋势,粒径比对这一变化趋势只有较小的影响.     

Nonequilibrium fluctuation relation for sheared micellar gel in a jammed state

We show that the shear rate at a fixed shear stress in a micellar gel in a jammed state exhibits large fluctuations, showing positive and negative values, with the mean shear rate being positive. The resulting probability distribution functions of the global power flux to the system vary from Gaussian to non-Gaussian, depending on the driving stress, and in all cases show similar symmetry properties as predicted by the Gallavotti-Cohen steady state fluctuation relation. The fluctuation relation allows us to determine an effective temperature related to the structural constraints of the jammed state. We have measured the stress dependence of the effective temperature. Further, experiments reveal that the effective temperature and the standard deviation of the shear-rate fluctuations increase with the decrease of the system size.     

Dynamical flow arrest in confined gravity driven flows of soft jammed particles

Using numerical simulations, we study the gravity driven flow of jammed soft disks in confined channels. We demonstrate that confinement results in increasing the yield threshold for the Poiseuille flow, in contrast to the planar Couette flow. By solving a nonlocal flow model for such systems, we show that this effect is due to the correlated dynamics responsible for flow, coupled with the stress heterogeneity imposed for the Poiseuille flow. We also observe that with increasing confinement, the cooperative nature of the flow results in increasing intermittent behavior. Our studies indicate that such features are generic properties of a wide variety of jammed materials.     

Suppressed compressibility at large scale in jammed packings of size-disperse spheres

We analyze the large-scale structure and fluctuations of jammed packings of size-disperse spheres, produced in a granular experiment as well as numerically. While the structure factor of the packings reveals no unusual behavior for small wave vectors, the compressibility displays an anomalous linear dependence at low wave vectors and vanishes when q→0. We show that such behavior occurs because jammed packings of size-disperse spheres have no bulk fluctuations of the volume fraction and are thus hyperuniform, a property not observed experimentally before. Our results apply to arbitrary particle size distributions. For continuous distributions, we derive a perturbative expression for the compressibility that is accurate for polydispersity up to about 30%.     

双连续型乳液凝胶(Bijel)的研究进展

双连续型结构是指同一体系中存在两种连续态,这在刚体中很容易实现,但对于流体却十分困难.要使两种流体同时保持连续态,不仅对它们的相容性、密度、极性等方面要求极高,还需要稳定剂来牢牢稳定住液-液界面.最早的双连续型凝胶是在对高聚物进行研究时发现的,后来英国爱丁堡大学软物质课题组进行了一系列研究,最终在低分子量液体体系中实现了重大突破,制备出本文所要讨论的bicontinuous interfacially jammed emulsion gel(Bijel).这种结构可以被称作"双连续型乳液凝胶",它兼有乳液(emulsion)和凝胶(gel)的物理性质,独特的双连续结构使它拥有更为广阔的应用空间.本文简短地回顾了Bijel的研发过程,总结近年来的研究进展,指出它在工业应用中受到的限制,并对室温下通过直接搅拌制备Bijel的方法做重点介绍.     

Abrupt transition from viscoelastic solidlike to liquidlike behavior in jammed materials

Using a new rheometrical technique, which makes it possible to determine both the velocity field in steady state and the strain field in the very first instants of the flow, we show that, beyond a critical deformation, typical pasty materials (a foam and a polymeric gel) turn abruptly from a viscoelastic solidlike behavior to a steady liquidlike behavior at a shear rate larger than a critical value.     

Modeling the capability of penetrating a jammed crowd to eliminate freezing transition

Frozen state from jammed state is one of the most interesting aspects produced when simulating the multidirectional pedestrian flow of high density crowds. Cases of real life situations for such a phenomenon are not exhaustively treated.Our observations in the Hajj crowd show that freezing transition does not occur very often. On the contrary, penetrating a jammed crowd is a common aspect. We believe the kindness of pedestrians facing others whose walking is blocked is a main factor in eliminating the frozen state as well as in relieving the jammed state. We refine the social force model by incorporating a new social force to enable the simulated pedestrians to mimic the real behavior observed in the Hajj area.Simulations are performed to validate the work qualitatively.