Physics – Condensed Matter – Soft Condensed Matter
Scientific paper
2011-10-09
Physics
Condensed Matter
Soft Condensed Matter
21 pages, 3 figures, and supplementary materials
Scientific paper
Granular materials exhibit numerous rich and complex behaviours, which have been investigated from both continuum and particulate perspectives. In particular, sound propagation through granular materials is both heterogeneous and complicated, and understanding its features is important not only from the perspective of fundamental physics but also for practical applications such as the characterization and non-destructive testing of such materials. Unfortunately, continuum models of sound propagation have been unable to explain the full range of observed behaviours. In this paper, we represent granular materials as spatially-embedded networks composed of nodes (particles) and weighted edges (contact forces between particles) with definite locations in Euclidean space, and we use ideas from network science to provide fundamental insights into how sound propagates through granular materials. We show that network modularity, a meso-scale property, characterises the sound propagation better than either the system-scale or local-scale network features. By performing experiments with photoelastic particles, we are able to quantitatively characterise the internal force structure, and our use of a network representation then allows us to probe its effect on signal propagation. By considering both unweighted and weighted networks, we show that the force structure plays a crucial role in sound propagation which might underlie the failure of previous physical models. We also find that geographic community structure of the (weighted) granular force chain network provides a fundamental constraint on sound propagation, illustrating that contact topology alone is insufficient to understand signal propagation in granular materials.
Bassett Danielle S.
Daniels Karen E.
Owens Eli T.
Porter Mason A.
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