Undulating compression and multistage relaxation in a granular column consisting of dust particles or glass beads

Abstract

For fundamentally characterizing the effect of hierarchical structure in granular matter, a set of compression-relaxation tests for dust particles and glass beads confined in a cylindrical cell was performed. The typical diameter of both grains is approximately 1 mm. However, dust particles are produced by binding tiny (∼5μm) glass beads. The granular columns were compressed with a piston until reaching a maximum load force of 20 N with a constant compression rate v (0.17≤v≤2000μms^{−1}). After that, the piston was stopped and the relaxation process was quantified. From the experimental results, we found that the compression force F nonlinearly increases with the increase of compression stroke z depending on particles. Besides, periodic undulation and sudden force drops were observed on F(z) in dust particles and glass beads, respectively. The relaxation process was characterized by an exponential decay of stress followed by a logarithmic dependence one in both kinds of particles. These experimental findings are the main point in this study. To understand the underlying physics governing the compression mechanics, we assumed empirical forms of F(z); F∝z^{α} for dust particles and F∝exp(z/z_{G}) for glass beads (α=2.4 and z_{G}=70μm). Then, we found that the growing manners of periodic undulation and force drops were identical to those of mean compression forces, i.e., power law in dust particles and exponential in glass beads. In addition, the undulation amplitude and wavelength decreased as v increased in dust-particle compression. On the basis of experimental results and the difference between dust particles and glass beads, we also discuss the origin of undulation and the physical meaning of granular-compression models used in engineering fields.