Experimental study of shear rate dependence in perpetually sheared granular matter

¹ Particles and grains laboratory, school of Civil Engineering, The University of Sydney, Sydney, NSW 2006, Australia
² IUSTI-CNRS UMR 7343, Aix-Marseille University, 13453 Marseille, France
³ Department of Civil, Environmental and Geomatic Engineering, Faculty of Engineering Science, University College London, London WCIE 6BT, United Kingdom

^* e-mail: sophie.liu@sydney.edu.au
^** e-mail: itai.einav@sdyney.edu.au

Published online: 30 June 2017

Abstract

We study the shear behaviour of various granular materials by conducting novel perpetual simple shear experiments over four orders of magnitude of relatively low shear rates. The newly developed experimental apparatus employed is called “3D Stadium Shear Device” which is an extended version of the 2D Stadium Shear Device [1]. This device is able to provide a non-radial dependent perpetual shear flow and a nearly linear velocity profile between two oppositely moving shear walls. Using this device, we are able to test a large variety of granular materials. Here, we demonstrate the applicability of the device on glass beads (diameter 1 mm, 3 mm, and 14 mm) and rice. We particularly focus on studying these materials at very low inertial number I ranging from 10⁻⁶ to 10⁻². We find that, within this range of I, the friction coefficient μ of glass beads has no shear rate dependence. A particularly appealing observation comes from testing rice, where the attainment of critical state develops under much longer duration than in other materials. Initially during shear we find a value of μ similar to that found for glass beads, but with time this value decreases gradually towards the asymptotic critical state value. The reason, we believe, lies in the fact that rice grains are strongly elongated; hence the time to achieve the stable μ is primarily controlled by the time for particles to align themselves with respect to the shear walls. Furthermore, the initial packing conditions of samples also plays a role in the evolution of μ when the shear strain is small, but that impact will eventually be erased after sufficient shear strain.