Jamming of extremely polydisperse granular materials

Work by Agnieszka Herman at the Institute of Oceanography, University of Gdansk (Poland) to model the response of two-dimensional, extremely polydisperse granular materials (with power-law grain size distribution) to various types of deformation (convergence, shear, etc.). The work concentrates on the role of polydispersity in shaping the behavior and properties of the modeled system. The model is applied to analyze the deformation of sea ice composed of individual, interacting ice floes in response to wind and/or ocean currents.

The first two figures show snapshots of contact networks in the modeled system subject to shear deformation. The last two show the correlation coefficient between velocity anomalies of a selected grain (dark brown) and all other grains. The first and third figures show an unjammed state; the second and fourth show a jammed state, for comparison.