In 2023 we have two papers on the physics of granular matter:
- Granular collapses: we publish at the Journal of Fluid Mechanics (together with former members of the team and H. Rousseau at Inrae/ETH) a validation study of the Sand6 code — relying on a nonsmooth discretisation of the Drucker-Prager rheology (original algorithm published at Siggraph 2016) — followed by a new exploration of granular collapses using both numerics and experiments;
- Assemblies of flexible rings: we present at Nature Communications Materials (in collaboration with T. Sano at Sigma Lab) an original study of the dissipative effects of flexible ring assemblies, relying on both experiments and numerics (super-helices coupled with dry frictional contact).
These studies highlight the importance of carefully validated simulators when studying physical systems, not only for confirming experiments and/or theory, but also for exploring new intricated phenomena difficult to model, where a large number of rigid or flexible structures are in contact or even entangled, and subject to dry frictional contact.
