Plastic flow of frictionless grains near the jamming transition

Claus Heussinger (1) , Pinaki Chaudhuri (1) , Jean-Louis Barrat (1)

1 LPMCN - Laboratoire de Physique de la Matière Condensée et Nanostructures

We present a numerical study of the flow of an assembly of frictionless grains at zero temperature, in the vicinity of and slightly above the jamming density. We find that some of the flow properties, such as the fluctuations in the number of contacts or the shear modulus, display a critical like behaviour that is governed by the proximity to the jamming point. Dynamical correlations during a quasistatic deformation, however, are non critical and dominated by system size. At finite strain rates, these dynamical correlations acquire a finite, strain-rate dependent amplitude, that decreases when approaching the jamming point from above.

Domaines: Science des matériaux [cond-mat.mtrl-sci]

Claus Heussinger, Pinaki Chaudhuri, Jean-Louis Barrat. Plastic flow of frictionless grains near the jamming transition. 2010. ⟨hal-00443919⟩