Biomedical subjects

D J Durian

Publications and source records attributed to D J Durian.

14 recordsLinked to original sources

PubMed2006

Approach to jamming in an air-fluidized granular bed.

Quasi-two-dimensional bidisperse amorphous systems of steel beads are fluidized by a uniform upflow of air, so that the beads roll on a horizontal plane. The short-time ballistic motion of the beads is stochastic, with non-Gaussian speed distributions and with different average kinetic energies for the two species. The approach to jamming is studied as a function of increasing bead area fraction and also as a function of decreasing air speed. The structure of the system is measured in terms of both the Voronoi tessellation and the pair distribution function. The dynamics of the system is measured in terms of both displacement statistics and the density of vibrational states. These quantities all exhibit tell-tale features as the dynamics become more constrained closer to jamming. In particular the pair distribution function and the Voronoi cell shape distribution function both develop split peaks. And the mean-squared displacement develops a plateau of subdiffusive motion separating ballistic and diffusive regimes. Though the system is driven and athermal, this behavior is remarkably reminiscent of that in dense colloidal suspensions and supercooled liquids. One possible difference is that kurtosis of the displacement distribution peaks at the beginning of the subdiffusive regime.

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PubMed2006

What is in a pebble shape?

We propose to characterize the shapes of flat pebbles in terms of the statistical distribution of curvatures measured along the pebble contour. This is demonstrated for the erosion of clay pebbles in a controlled laboratory apparatus. Photographs at various stages of erosion are analyzed, and compared with two models. We find that the curvature distribution complements the usual measurement of aspect ratio, and connects naturally to erosion processes that are typically faster at protruding regions of high curvature.

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PubMed2005

Dynamics of shallow impact cratering.

We present data for the time dependence of wooden spheres penetrating into a loose noncohesive packing of glass beads. The stopping time is a factor of 3 longer than the time d/v0 needed to travel the total penetration distance d at the impact speed v0. The acceleration decreases monotonically throughout the impact. These kinematics are modeled by a position- and velocity-dependent stopping force that is constrained to reproduce prior observations for the scaling of the penetration depth with the total drop distance.

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PubMed2005

Partition of energy for air-fluidized grains.

The dynamics of one and two identical spheres rolling in a nearly levitating upflow of air obey the Langevin equation and the fluctuation-dissipation relation [Ojha Nature (London) 427, 521 (2004); Phys. Rev. E 71, 016313 (2005)]. To probe the range of validity of this statistical mechanical description, we perturb the original experiments in four ways. First, we break the circular symmetry of the confining potential by using a stadium-shaped trap, and find that the velocity distributions remain circularly symmetric. Second, we fluidize multiple spheres of different density, and find that all have the same effective temperature. Third, we fluidize two spheres of different size, and find that the thermal analogy progressively fails according to the size ratio. Fourth, we fluidize individual grains of aspherical shape, and find that the applicability of statistical mechanics depends on whether or not the grain chatters along its length, in the direction of airflow.

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PubMed2005

Penetration depth for shallow impact cratering.

We present data for the penetration of a variety of spheres, dropped from rest, into a loose noncohesive granular medium. We improve upon earlier work [J. S. Uehara, Phys. Rev. Lett. 90, 194301 (2003)] in three regards. First, we explore the behavior vs sphere diameter and density more systematically, by holding one of these parameters constant while varying the other. Second, we prepare the granular medium more reproducibly and, third, we measure the penetration depth more accurately. The new data support the previous conclusion that the penetration depth is proportional to the 1/2 power of sphere density, the 2/3 power of sphere diameter, and the 1/3 power of total drop distance.

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PubMed2005

Statistical characterization of the forces on spheres in an upflow of air.

The dynamics of a sphere fluidized in a nearly levitating upflow of air were previously found to be identical to those of a Brownian particle in a two-dimensional harmonic trap, consistent with a Langevin equation [Ojha et al., Nature (London) 427, 521 (2004)]. The random forcing, the drag, and the trapping potential represent different aspects of the interaction of the sphere with the air flow. In this paper we vary the experimental conditions for a single sphere, and report on how the force terms in the Langevin equation scale with air flow speed, sphere radius, sphere density, and system size. We also report on the effective interaction potential between two spheres in an upflow of air.

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PubMed2004

Statistical mechanics of a gas-fluidized particle.

Characterization of the microscopic fluctuations in systems that are far from equilibrium is crucial for understanding the macroscopic response. One approach is to use an 'effective temperature'--such a quantity has been invoked for chaotic fluids, spin glasses, glasses and colloids, as well as non-thermal systems such as flowing granular materials and foams. We therefore ask to what extent the concept of effective temperature is valid. Here we investigate this question experimentally in a simple system consisting of a sphere placed on a fine screen in an upward flow of gas; the sphere rolls because of the turbulence it generates in the gas stream. In contrast to many-particle systems, in which it is difficult to measure and predict fluctuations, our system has no particle-particle interactions and its dynamics can be captured fully by video imaging. Surprisingly, we find that the sphere behaves exactly like a harmonically bound brownian particle. The random driving force and frequency-dependent drag satisfy the fluctuation-dissipation relation, a cornerstone of statistical mechanics. The statistical mechanics of near-equilibrium systems is therefore unexpectedly useful for studying at least some classes of systems that are driven far from equilibrium.

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PubMed2003

Projectile-shape dependence of impact craters in loose granular media.

We report on the penetration of cylindrical projectiles dropped from rest into a dry, noncohesive granular medium. The cylinder length, diameter, density, and tip shape are all explicitly varied. For deep penetrations, as compared to the cylinder diameter, the data collapse onto a single scaling law that varies as the 1/3 power of the total drop distance, the 1/2 power of cylinder length, and the 1/6 power of cylinder diameter. For shallow penetrations, the projectile shape plays a crucial role with sharper objects penetrating deeper.

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PubMed2003

Relaxing in foam.

We report how aqueous foams lose their elasticity along two trajectories in the jamming phase diagram. With time, bubbles unjam due to coarsening. Rheology is measured over nearly six (five) decades in frequency (time); surprisingly, it is linear and well behaved at low frequencies. With shear, bubbles also unjam. Rheology is measured by a novel method in which a step strain is superposed on an otherwise steady flow; transient elasticity vanishes at the same strain rate at which successive bubble rearrangements merge together. Thus we connect the macroscopic rheology with the underlying microscopic bubble dynamics.

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PubMed2003

Low-speed impact craters in loose granular media.

We report on craters formed by balls dropped into dry, noncohesive, granular media. By explicit variation of ball density rho(b), diameter D(b), and drop height H, the crater diameter is confirmed to scale as the 1/4 power of the energy of the ball at impact: D(c) approximately equal (rho(b)D(3)(b)H)(1/4). Against expectation, a different scaling law is discovered for the crater depth: d approximately equal (rho(3/2)(b)D(2)(b)H)(1/3). The scaling with properties of the medium is also established. The crater depth has significance for granular mechanics in that it relates to the stopping force on the ball.

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PubMed2003

Speckle visibility spectroscopy and variable granular fluidization.

We introduce a dynamic light scattering technique capable of resolving motion that changes systematically, and rapidly, with time. It is based on the visibility of a speckle pattern for a given exposure duration. Applying this to a vibrated layer of glass beads, we measure the granular temperature and its variation with phase in the oscillation cycle. We observe several transitions involving jammed states, where the grains are at rest during some portion of the cycle. We also observe a two-step decay of the temperature on approach to jamming.

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PubMed2002

Effective temperatures of a driven system near jamming.

Fluctuations in a model of a sheared, zero-temperature foam are studied numerically. Five different quantities that independently reduce to the true temperature in an equilibrium thermal system are calculated. One of the quantities is calculated up to an unknown coefficient. The other four quantities have the same value and all five have the same shear-rate dependence. These results imply that statistical mechanics is useful for the system even though it is far from thermal equilibrium.

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PubMed2002

Enhanced drainage and coarsening in aqueous foams.

Experiments are presented elucidating how the evolution of foam microstructure by gas diffusion from high to low pressure bubbles can significantly speed up the rate of gravitational drainage, and vice versa. This includes detailed data on the liquid-fraction dependence of the coarsening rate, and on the liquid-fraction and the bubble-size profiles across a sample. These results can be described by a "coarsening equation" for the increase of bubble growth rate for drier foams. Spatial variation of the average bubble size and liquid fraction can also affect the growth and drainage rates.

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PubMed1999

Statistics of shear-induced rearrangements in a two-dimensional model foam.

Under steady shear, a foam relaxes stress through intermittent rearrangements of bubbles accompanied by sudden drops in the stored elastic energy. We use a simple model of foam that incorporates both elasticity and dissipation to study the statistics of bubble rearrangements in terms of energy drops, the number of nearest neighbor changes, and the rate of neighbor-switching (T1) events. We do this for a two-dimensional system as a function of system size, shear rate, dissipation mechanism, and gas area fraction. We find that for dry foams, there is a well-defined quasistatic limit at low shear rates where localized rearrangements occur at a constant rate per unit strain, independent of both system size and dissipation mechanism. These results are in good qualitative agreement with experiments on two-dimensional and three-dimensional foams. In contrast, we find for progessively wetter foams that the event size distribution broadens into a power law that is cut off only by system size. This is consistent with criticality at the melting transition.

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