Issue |
EPL
Volume 115, Number 6, September 2016
|
|
---|---|---|
Article Number | 64001 | |
Number of page(s) | 5 | |
Section | Electromagnetism, Optics, Acoustics, Heat Transfer, Classical Mechanics, and Fluid Dynamics | |
DOI | https://doi.org/10.1209/0295-5075/115/64001 | |
Published online | 03 November 2016 |
Fracture reveals clustering in cohesive granular matter
Univ Lyon, Ens de Lyon, Univ Claude Bernard, CNRS, Laboratoire de Physique - F-69342 Lyon, France
Received: 26 April 2016
Accepted: 11 October 2016
We report an experimental study of the morphology of fractures in cohesive granular materials. Cohesion is introduced by equilibrating the grains with a humid atmosphere. The setup allows to produce a controlled crack in a thin layer of a glass beads assembly, and observe with an extremely high resolution the edge of the fracture at the free surface of the layer. The detailed multi-scale analysis of the fracture profile reveals the presence, in the bulk of the material, of clusters of grains whose size increases monotonically with the relative humidity. These results are important because the formation of clusters, resulting in a heterogeneity of the cohesion force, governs the mechanical properties of cohesive granular matter in contact with a humid atmosphere.
PACS: 45.70.-n – Granular systems / 47.57.Gc – Granular flow / 62.20.mm – Fracture
© EPLA, 2016
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