Brief Communications
Nature 427, 503-504 (5 February 2004) | doi:10.1038/427503a
Stress propagation: Getting to the bottom of a granular medium
Matthew B. Stone, David P. Bernstein, Rachel Barry, Matthew D. Pelc, Yee-Kin Tsui and Peter Schiffer
Penetration by an object through a dense granular medium (for example, by a finger pushing slowly into the sand on a beach) presents an interesting physics problem1 that is closely related to issues of practical importance in soil science2, 3. Here we measure the penetration-resistance force for an object approaching the solid bottom boundary of a granular sample — analogous to the finger approaching a flat rock buried in the beach. We find that the penetration resistance near the boundary increases exponentially, which demonstrates the existence of an intrinsic length scale to the 'jamming' caused by a locally applied stress.
- Department of Physics and Materials Research Institute, Pennsylvania State University, University Park, Pennsylvania 16802, USA
Correspondence to: Peter Schiffer Email: schiffer@phys.psu.edu
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