Events EMMC20Conference SymposiaS14: Mechanics of porous and granular materials

S14: Mechanics of porous and granular materials

 

Anthony Thornton, University of Twente, The Netherlands, email

Ugo Galvanetto, University of Padova, Italy, email

 

Symposium description

Porous and granular materials are currently at the focus of extensive research in different scientific communities and disciplines with the aim of physics-based modeling of their mechanical behaviors by accounting for their disordered and highly inhomogeneous microstructure. While most classical mean-field modeling approaches are based on mean scalar variables such as porosity or void ratio, recent developments suggest that the broad distributions of local porosities and their spatial correlations as well as real particle characteristics such as shape and size distribution or higher-order descriptors of the microstructure are essential for a predictive modeling of macroscopic properties and/or harnessing microstructures to engineer macroscopic properties.

In powder technology of agro-food materials, metals and ceramics, and in many geomaterials such as rocks and concrete, cohesive and cemented granular materials play a paramount role, but have been much less considered from a constitutive or computational modeling point of view as compared with cohesionless materials. They present features that combine those of porous and granular materials with stress concentration due to pores and contact chains at the same time. The role of particle shape and its evolution in grinding processes and natural flows is another key issue at the center of current research. On the other hand, the formulation of rheological laws accounting for both frictional and volume-change behavior in rapid flows remains a challenging area of research. In the same way, the transient deformations under complex loading conditions, such as cyclic behavior, have been poorly understood from a void/particle-scale viewpoint.

Despite many aspects of common interest in the fields of porous and granular materials, there has so far been quite a limited interaction between the two fields. This session aims to bring together contributions of recent research on both porous and granular materials in view of promoting a fruitful dialogue. All contributions on granular and porous materials will be welcome, including recent experimental mechanics methods such as imaging techniques, study of flow and compaction of particulate and porous media, and poromechanical couplings at different scales. In the same vein, the session will equally cover recent advances in constitutive models and their implementation for predicting the overall material responses. The organizers will pay particular attention to interactions between the two communities of granular and porous media. The topics include (but are not limited to):

•  Cohesive granular materials

•  Particle or void shape effects

•  Compaction and flow of breakable particles

•  Upscaling, relationships between microstructures and properties

•  Deformation mechanism, strain localization , and instabilities

•  Multiphysics couplings and transport phenomena

•  Surface effects and adsorption

•  Constitutive models of granular and porous media

•  Novel computational methods