Response of a Hexagonal Granular Packing under a Localized External Force: Exact Results

TL;DR

This paper provides an exact analysis of how a two-dimensional hexagonal granular packing responds to a localized force, revealing a double-peaked response pattern that scales with system size and persists at the boundaries.

Contribution

It introduces an exact, scalable solution for the force response in a hexagonal granular packing, connecting it to a correlated q-model and analyzing finite-size effects.

Findings

Response exhibits double peaks on lattice directions.

Peak magnitudes decrease with system size, central maximum broadens.

Peaks persist in the thermodynamic limit, response scales as 1/N in the bulk.

Abstract

We study the response of a two-dimensional hexagonal packing of massless, rigid, frictionless spherical grains due to a vertically downward point force on a single grain at the top layer. We use a statistical approach, where each mechanically stable configuration of contact forces is equally likely. We show that this problem is equivalent to a correlated $q$-model. We find that the response is double-peaked, where the two peaks, sharp and single-grain diameter wide, lie on the two downward lattice directions emanating from the point of the application of the external force. For systems of finite size, the magnitude of these peaks decreases towards the bottom of the packing, while progressively a broader, central maximum appears between the peaks. The response behaviour displays a remarkable scaling behaviour with system size $N$: while the response in the bulk of the packing scales as $\frac{1}{N}$, on the boundary it is independent of $N$, so that in the thermodynamic limit only the peaks on the lattice directions persist. This qualitative behaviour is extremely robust, as demonstrated by our simulation results with different boundary conditions. We have obtained expressions of the response and higher correlations for any system size in terms of integers corresponding to an underlying discrete structure.