Relaxation of granular elasticity

Abstract

In granular materials, particles constitute a complex force chains network through contact with each other, and elastic energies are stored due to deformation of particles. This elastic behavior is macroscopic manifestation of inter-particle contacts. Elastic constants or elastic moduli are of fundamental importance for granular material. Due to the hyper-static property of inter-particle forces, the bulk elastic energy stored in the contacts is metastable in the viewpoint of energy landscape, i.e. a high energy state may approaches a more stable state (i.e. relatively lower state) under the action of external perturbations or internal stress, resulting in the elastic modulus reduction. This process is the so-called elasticity relaxation. It may be more obvious in granular materials.The time-dependent behavior of granular materials, especially the creep, has been studied in experiments and numerical simulations, while the stress relaxation has few reported investigations. Stress relaxation is defined as the process in vohich the initial strain is maintained and the stress decays with the time. From energetic viewpoint, elastic energy is stored in the deformation of particles. The granular system is in a metastable state when confined in a state easy to break the balance. Generally speaking, the shape and grading of particles, volume fraction, surface friction properties, initial structure features, ageing time, loading strain rate will all play important roles in stress relaxation.In this work, it is believed that the elastic relaxation is the only mechanism to describe the stress relaxation, and the mechanism of it is analyzed from the viewpoint of the potential energy surface. Stress relaxation is calculated by means of the so-called two-granular temperature theory (TGT) we developed previously (Sun Q et al. 2015 Sci. Rep. 5 9652). The stress decays fast at the beginning, then decreases gradually slowly to a stable value. The logarithmic fit is first proposed to describe the stress decay in the compressed system. Calculated results of stress relaxation match well with the measured results in a recently published paper (Miksic A, Alava M J 2013 Phys. Rev. E 88 032207). Both elastic energy and granular temperature may be reduced with increasing time. It is found that the initial value of the granular temperature has a great influence on the stress relaxation, and at present its effect is input by trial and error. It would be a major problem how to determine the initial value of the granular temperature. Moreover, the relaxation coefficient of elastic stress is basically chosen as a function of granular temperature which is described by the Arrhenius equation that need be further investigated.