Mechanical & Materials Engineering, Department of
Date of this Version
6-2009
Abstract
Granular materials exhibit a complex array of phenomena which makes the prediction of their behavior extremely difficult. Granular materials are strongly dissipative and show collective (heap formation, jamming) and size segregation phenomena, and can propagate surface waves. They display fluidization and convective motion, and under certain vibration regimes, they tend to mix when they would otherwise segregate, and segregate when they might otherwise mix. The wide range of behaviors that granular materials can display has been one of the main factors for which the development of predictive models has continued to remain an open problem.
The papers in this Special Issue on Advances in the Dynamics of Granular Materials show some recent theoretical, computational, and experimental results in various aspects of the mechanics of granular materials. A better understanding of the mechanics (and especially dynamics) of granular matter can lead to significant savings in energy and costs in various industries, such as pharmaceutical and chemical industries, food and agriculture, mining and oil extraction, construction, and transportation. The papers in this issue address fundamental and practical issues in the mechanics of granular matter.
Comments
Published in Mechanics of Materials 41:6 (June 2009), pp. 635-636; doi 10.1016/j.mechmat.2009.02.007 Copyright © 2009 Elsevier Ltd. Used by permission. http://www.elsevier.com/locate/mechmat