Granular Physics

2007 account of developments in granular physics for researchers in statistical and mathematical physics.

Anita Mehta (Author)

9780521187992, Cambridge University Press

Paperback, published 3 March 2011

322 pages
24.4 x 17 x 1.7 cm, 0.52 kg

The field of granular physics has burgeoned since its development in the late 1980s, when physicists first began to use statistical mechanics to study granular media. They are prototypical of complex systems, manifesting metastability, hysteresis and bistability, and a range of other fascinating phenomena. This 2007 book is a wide-ranging account of developments in granular physics, and lays out the foundations of the statics and dynamics of granular physics. It covers a wide range of subfields, ranging from fluidisation to jamming, and these are modelled through a range of computer simulation and theoretical approaches. Written with an eye to pedagogy and completeness, this book will be valuable asset to any researcher in this field. The book also contains contributions from Professor Sir Sam Edwards, with Dr Raphael Blumenfeld, Professor Isaac Goldhirsch and Professor Philippe Claudin.

1. Introduction
2. Computer simulation approaches - an overview
3. Structure of vibrated powders - numerical results
4. Collective structures in sand - the phenomenon of bridging
5. On angles of repose: bistability and collapse
6. Compaction of disordered grains in the jamming limit: sand on random graphs
7. Shaking a box of sand I - a simple lattice model
8. Shaking a box of sand II - at the jamming limit, when shape matters!
9. Avalanches with reorganising grains
10. From earthquakes to sandpiles - stick-slip motion
11. Coupled continuum equations: the dynamics of sand-pile surfaces
12. Theory of rapid granular flows
13. The thermodynamics of granular materials
14. Static properties of granular materials
Author index
Subject index
Bibliography.

Subject Areas: Condensed matter physics [liquid state & solid state physics PHFC]