EVENT DETAILS AND ABSTRACT

Title: Science in the Sandbox: Forces and Flucutations in Granular Materials
Speaker: Robert Behringer
Speaker Info: Duke University
Brief Description:
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Abstract:

Granular materials present a host of scientific and technological challenges. The handling of granular materials involves vasts amount of resources, and covers a substantial range of industrial sectors. From the point of view of basic physics, our understanding of granular materials falls substantially behind our understanding of conventional materials, e.g. ordinary solids, liquids and gases. However, granular materials exhibit similarities to all of these more conventional molecular phases. I will begin with a brief introduction to the different granular phases.I will then focus on some of the key issues associated with the understanding of dense granular materials. These include the suprisingly strong character of force fluctuations, and the way in hich forces are transmitted within dense granular systems. Recent experiments point to a statistical description of granular materials and provide tests of a spectrum of new granular models.