The path to fracture in granular flows: dynamics of contact networks

摘要

Capturing the dynamics of granular flows at intermediate length scales canoften be difficult. We propose studying the dynamics of contact networks as anew tool to study fracture at intermediate scales. Using experimentalthree-dimensional flow fields with particle-scale resolution, we calculate thetime evolving broken-links network and find that a giant component of thisnetwork is formed as shear is applied to this system. We implement a model oflink breakages where the probability of a link breaking is proportional to theaverage rate of longitudinal strain (elongation) in the direction of the edgeand find that the model demonstrates qualitative agreement with the data whenstudying the onset of the giant component. We note, however, that thebroken-links network formed in the model is less clustered than ourexperimental observations, indicating that the model reflects less localizedbreakage events and does not fully capture the dynamics of the granular flow.