Elastic Energy, Fluctuations and Temperature for Granular Materials

Original · EN

We probe, using a model system, elastic and kinetic energies for sheared granular materials. For large enough P/Ey (pressure/Young's modulus) and P/ρv² (P/kinetic energy density) elastic dominates kinetic energy, and energy fluctuations become primarily elastic in nature. This regime has likely been reached in recent experiments. We consider a generalization of the granular temperature, Tg, with both kinetic and elastic terms and that changes smoothly from one regime to the other. This Tg is roughly consistent with a temperature adapted from equilibrium statistical mechanics.