G. Lois et al 2006 Europhys. Lett. 76 318 doi:10.1209/epl/i2005-10605-1
G. Lois1, A. Lemaître1,2 and J. M. Carlson1
Show affiliationsWe examine the binary collision assumption of hard-sphere kinetic theory in numerical simulations of sheared granular materials. For a wide range of densities and restitution coefficients we measure collisional and non-collisional contributions to the stress tensor and find that non-collisional effects dominate at large density and small restitution coefficient. In the regimes where the non-collisional contributions disappear, we test kinetic theory predictions for the pressure without any fitting parameters and find remarkable agreement. In the regimes where the non-collisional contributions become large, we observe groups of simultaneously interacting grains and determine the average multi-contact cluster size using measurements of spatial force correlations.
89.75.Fb Structures and organization in complex systems
Issue 2 (October 2006)
Received 27 December 2005, accepted for publication 23 August 2006, in final form 23 August 2006
Published 13 September 2006
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