Invited review: Effect of temperature on a granular pile

TL;DR

This review discusses how temperature variations influence the stability, rearrangement, and compaction of granular piles, highlighting experimental observations and comparing thermal effects to vibrational compaction across different scales.

Contribution

It synthesizes existing research on temperature effects in granular systems, emphasizing controlled thermal compaction and its comparison to vibration-induced methods.

Findings

Temperature variations induce localized and global rearrangements.

Controlled temperature changes can effectively compact granular piles.

Thermal effects are relevant across microscopic to macroscopic granular systems.

Abstract

As a fragile construction, a granular pile is very sensitive to minute external perturbations. In particular, it is now well established that a granular assembly is sensitive to variations of temperature. Such variations can produce localized rearrangements as well as global static avalanches inside a pile. In this review, we sum up the various observations that have been made concerning the effect of temperature on a granular assembly. In particular, we dwell on the way controlled variations of temperature have been employed to generate the compaction of a granular pile. After laying emphasis on the key features of this compaction process, we compare it to the classic vibration-induced compaction. Finally, we also review other granular systems in a large sense, from microscopic (jammed multilamellar vesicles) to macroscopic scales (stone heave phenomenon linked to freezing and thawing of soils) for which periodic variations of temperature could play a key role in the dynamics at stake.