Trajectory entanglement in dense granular materials

Details Trajectory entanglement in dense granular materials Trajectory entanglement in dense granular materials

2012-02-23

arxiv.org/abs/1202.5243v1

Physics

Condensed Matter

Soft Condensed Matter

Scientific paper

The particle-scale dynamics of granular materials have commonly been characterized by the self-diffusion coefficient $D$. However, this measure discards the collective and topological information known to be an important characteristic of particle trajectories in dense systems. Direct measurement of the entanglement of particle space-time trajectories can be obtained via the topological braid entropy $\Sbraid$, which has previously been used to quantify mixing efficiency in fluid systems. Here, we investigate the utility of $\Sbraid$ in characterizing the dynamics of a dense, driven granular material at packing densities near the static jamming point $\phi_J$. From particle trajectories measured within a two-dimensional granular material, we typically observe that $\Sbraid$ is well-defined and extensive. However, for systems where $\phi \gtrsim 0.79$, we find that $\Sbraid$ (like $D$) is not well-defined, signifying that these systems are not ergodic on the experimental timescale. Both $\Sbraid$ and $D$ decrease with either increasing packing density or confining pressure, independent of the applied boundary condition. The related braiding factor provides a means to identify multi-particle phenomena such as collective rearrangements. We discuss possible uses for this measure in characterizing granular systems.

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