Universal aspects of cohesion

• Published in: Granular matter Vol. 24; no. 1
• Main Authors: Lehman, Susan Y., Christman, Lilianna E., Jacobs, D. T., Johnson, Nathan S. D. E. F., Palchoudhuri, Paroma, Tieman, Catherine E., Vajpeyi, Avi, Wainwright, Elliot R., Walker, Justine E., Wilson, Ian S., LeBlanc, Michael, McFaul, Louis W., Uhl, Jonathan T., Dahmen, Karin A.
• Format: Journal Article
• Language: English
• Published: Berlin/Heidelberg Springer Berlin Heidelberg 01-02-2022; Springer Nature B.V
• Subjects: Avalanches; Cohesion; Complex Fluids and Microfluidics; Earthquakes; Engineering Fluid Dynamics; Engineering Thermodynamics; Foundations; Geoengineering; Geometry; Granular materials; Heat and Mass Transfer; Hydraulics; Industrial Chemistry/Chemical Engineering; Investigations; Magnetic fields; Materials Science; Original Paper; Phase transitions; Physics; Physics and Astronomy; Plastic deformation; Soft and Granular Matter; Time series; Scaling behaviour; Critical behavior; Universality; Mean field theory; Granular materials; Avalanches
• ISSN: 1434-5021; 1434-7636
• DOI: 10.1007/s10035-021-01188-1

Universal aspects of the effect of cohesion are explored by a combination of experiments and modeling. Experimentally, we observe the avalanching behavior of a granular bead pile while varying the cohesion, and we find these experimental results to be closely matched by the results of a simple theoretical model of a completely different system. In both cases, cohesion can lead to catastrophically large avalanches that recur almost periodically. The effects of cohesion on the statistics and the time series properties of the experimental avalanches correspond closely to the effect of dynamic weakening on the slip avalanches in a simple model used both for earthquakes and the plastic deformation of brittle solids. These results suggest a large universality class for avalanche statistics spanning systems with different material specifics and system geometry.