Photoelastic study of acoustic wave propagation in grain packings

Xavier Noblin (1) , Guillaume Huillard (1) , Jean Rajchenbach (1)

1 LPMC - Laboratoire de physique de la matière condensée

By means of photoelasticity, we success in visualizing in real time the propagation of acoustic waves in a granular packing of cylinders. As previously mentioned by Nesterenko for the case of spherical grains, the nonlinearity of the contact law between grains induces a dependence of the wave velocity both on its amplitude and on the confinement force. Our experimental procedure allows an access to the local state of stress of individual grains as a function of time with a good accuracy. Our results concerning the wave velocity as a function of the amplitude, and of the confinement force, are compared to theoretical predictions and to the spherical beads case.

Mots clés: Granular material; mechanical wave propagation; photoelasticity; nonlinear behavior; contact law of elastic solids

Domaines: Matière Molle [cond-mat.soft]; Acoustique [physics.class-ph]; Acoustique [physics.class-ph]

Xavier Noblin, Guillaume Huillard, Jean Rajchenbach. Photoelastic study of acoustic wave propagation in grain packings. POWDERS AND GRAINS 2009 6th International Conference on the Micromechanics of Granular Media, Jul 2009, Golden, CO, United States. pp.439-442. ⟨hal-00455112⟩