Granular materials, as a physical system, comprise large assemblies of discrete macroscopic particles that interact predominantly via contact forces, friction, and inelastic collisions, leading to inherently dissipative, non-equilibrium behavior. They exhibit dual solid-like and fluid-like responses depending on stress, packing fraction, and driving conditions, with phenomena such as jamming, dilatancy, force chains, and shear banding. Continuum descriptions often employ modified elasto-plastic or rheological models (e.g., μ(I) rheology), while discrete element methods resolve particle-scale dynamics. Their mechanical response is strongly history-dependent and non-linear, with emergent collective effects that challenge conventional thermodynamic and hydrodynamic formalisms.
A research team from the School of Engineering at the Hong Kong University of Science and Technology has developed a new computational model to study the movement of granular materials such as soils, sands and powders. By ...
General Physics
May 16, 2025
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85
Lately, there's been plenty of progress in 3D printing objects from the lunar regolith. We've reported on several projects that have attempted to do so, with varying degrees of success. However, most of them require some ...
Planetary Sciences
Apr 28, 2025
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8
Did you eat cereal this morning? Or have you walked on a gravel path? Maybe you had a headache and had to take a pill? If you answered any of these questions with a yes, you interacted with a granular system today.
Earth Sciences
Apr 28, 2025
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1
Why do avalanches start to slide? And what happens inside the "pile of snow?" If you ask yourself these questions, you are very close to a physical problem. This phenomenon not only occurs on mountain peaks and in snow masses, ...
Condensed Matter
Feb 17, 2025
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20
In bird colonies, schools of fish and cycling pelotons, significant interactions occur between individuals through the surrounding fluid. These interactions are well understood in fluids such as air and water, but what happens ...
Coffee beans in a jar and piles of rice or sand are examples of granular matter: materials composed of large numbers of macroscopic—rather than atomic scale—particles. Although granular matter is extremely familiar in ...
General Physics
Apr 17, 2024
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236
Once a particle of matter, always a particle of matter. Or not. Thanks to a quirk of quantum physics, four known particles made up of two different quarks—such as the electrically neutral D meson composed of a charm quark ...
General Physics
Apr 12, 2024
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1591
When we take a stroll on the beach, we walk on the sand without any trouble. The sand appears solid and is difficult to compress. When we put the same sand grains in an hourglass, they behave very differently: the sand flows ...
General Physics
Apr 3, 2024
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2
Rochester researchers are uncovering the unexpected role of grain shape in the mixing of granular systems such as pharmaceuticals, cereal, and landslides.
General Physics
Feb 12, 2024
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20
