Project

Time and System Size Dependent Response of Soft Granular Packings to Slow Compression

Granular materials are unique because their mechanical response to external stress depends on the properties of the grains that constitute, the way are are geometrically arranged and the properties of the contacts between them. athis makes them quite complicated. And yet, they are ubiqutous in nature and in industry and behave both as a fluid and a solid. My research looks at a very specific part of this puzzle. We look at how the mechanical response of packings of different sizes constituting of soft grains behave under slow consistent loading over time. For this purpose we often use industrially available polyacrylamide hydrogel spheres immersed in water as oyr model systems. Why? beacuse the grains are almost frictionless and when immersed in water also almost weightless, allowing us to come up with relatively clean, simple systems to play with. We study these systems at the single particle, particle pair and small system scales experimentally to see how and which particle properties scale with system sizes and to look for emergent behaviors.