Shear-induced rigidity of frictional particles: Analysis of emergent order in stress space

TL;DR

This paper investigates shear-induced jamming in dry granular materials, revealing a dual space symmetry breaking that signals rigidity onset, challenging traditional energy-based paradigms of solidification.

Contribution

It introduces a dual space framework to analyze shear jamming, identifying a protocol-independent order parameter that marks the transition to rigidity.

Findings

Shear jamming is controlled by mechanical equilibrium constraints.

Broken symmetry in dual space signals the rigidity transition.

A protocol-independent order parameter can be defined in dual space.

Abstract

Solids are distinguished from fluids by their ability to resist shear. In traditional solids, the resistance to shear is associated with the emergence of broken translational symmetry as exhibited by a non-uniform density pattern, which results from either minimizing the energy cost or maximizing the entropy or both. In this work, we focus on a class of systems, where this paradigm is challenged. We show that shear-driven jamming in dry granular materials is a collective process controlled solely by the constraints of mechanical equilibrium. We argue that these constraints lead to a broken translational symmetry in a dual space that encodes the statistics of contact forces and the topology of the contact network. The shear-jamming transition is marked by the appearance of this broken symmetry. We extend our earlier work, by comparing and contrasting real space measures of rheology with those obtained from the dual space. We investigate the structure and behavior of the dual space as the system evolves through the rigidity transition in two different shear protocols. We analyze the robustness of the shear-jamming scenario with respect to protocol and packing fraction, and demonstrate that it is possible to define a protocol-independent order parameter in this dual space, which signals the onset of rigidity.