Joshua Dijksman

Abstract:

Granular materials are ubiquitous in nature and industry. From landslides to extrusion of animal feed, particulate materials are relevant for all aspects of human life. Despite our frequent exposure to these materials, their handling still confronts us with unique engineering challenges. Notably the flow behavior of these materials is spatiotemporally heterogeneous and non-local in nature, both of which present both experimental and theoretical complexities. Granular materials however also present us with an opportunity to systematically investigate this behavior, as we are nowadays uniquely capable of tuning particle properties to a great extent, and can study their mechanical behavior in ever greater detail. We foresee that studying granular materials thus offers a window on the behavior of a broad range of classes of materials that display heterogeneous behavior. In my talk I will discuss the latest experimental developments on granular flow measurements and related modeling attempts.