Albert I, Tegzes P, Kahng B, Albert R, Sample JG, Pfeifer M, Barabasi A, Vicsek T, Schiffer P
Department of Physics, University of Notre Dame, Notre Dame, Indiana 46556, USA.
Phys Rev Lett. 2000 May 29;84(22):5122-5. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.84.5122.
We investigate the dynamic evolution of jamming in granular media through fluctuations in the granular drag force. The successive collapse and formation of jammed states give a stick-slip nature to the fluctuations which is independent of the contact surface between the grains and the dragged object, thus implying that the stress-induced collapse is nucleated in the bulk of the granular sample. We also find that while the fluctuations are periodic at small depths, they become "stepped" at large depths, a transition which we interpret as a consequence of the long-range nature of the force chains.
