Abstract
Aggregates of non-convex particles have shown to be particularly stable which makes them good candidates to design new lightweight and reversible structures. However, few is known about the fundamental reason of their stability. In this paper we presents a novel experimental method to investigate the local structure of piles made of hexapod particles. This method is based on X-ray scanning and on an accurate homemade particle detection code. It permits to get the position and orientation of each particle as well as to detect their contact points. Measurement of the coordination numbers, statistics of the contact positions and local density evaluation for different packing configurations show a good agreement with the previous studies carried out at the global scale and permits to explain the main local mechanisms leading to stable structures.
Highlights
The use of aggregates made from non-convex particles or particles with anisotropic contact laws is an emerging area for both the research in physics [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] and the design of functionalized materials by tuning local properties of the grains [8,9,10,11]
Two of the most striking characteristics of non-convex designed granulates, in terms of the granular system and possible design applications are their ability to form vertical structures with a 90◦ angle of repose, and to sustain small tilting or loading perturbations [2]. Even if this tremendous stability illustrated in the fig.1-A has already been evidenced in several experiments [2, 5, 17, 18] and if packing of such particles has been widely studied [19,20,21], few is know about the fundamental reasons of why non convex particle piles are much more stable than bead columns [16, 22, 23]
In order to understand the origin of this rigidity, in this paper, we investigate the local organization of columns e-mail: jb@jonathan-bares.eu made of star-shape or hexapod particles using X-ray CT-scan
Summary
The use of aggregates made from non-convex particles or particles with anisotropic contact laws is an emerging area for both the research in physics [1,2,3,4,5,6,7] and the design of functionalized materials by tuning local properties of the grains [8,9,10,11] This new field in granular matter science has already shown to be extremely promising for future lightweight and reversible architecture [12].
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