Effective temperature and jamming transition in dense, gently sheared granular assemblies

TL;DR

This study investigates the effective temperature in sheared granular materials, finding it aligns with theoretical predictions for jammed states and exhibits properties similar to thermodynamic temperature, despite some limitations.

Contribution

The paper provides extensive computational evidence linking effective temperature to jammed granular packings and compares it with theoretical concepts like compactivity.

Findings

Effective temperature is consistent across different tracers.

Temperature becomes shear-rate independent at slow shear.

Shear induces jamming in tangentially interacting particles.

Abstract

We present extensive computational results for the effective temperature, defined by the fluctuation-dissipation relation between the mean square displacement and the average displacement of grains, under the action of a weak, external perturbation, of a sheared, bi-disperse granular packing of compressible spheres. We study the dependence of this parameter on the shear rate and volume fractions, the type of particle and the observable in the fluctuation-dissipation relation. We find the same temperature for different tracer particles in the system. The temperature becomes independent on the shear rate for slow enough shear suggesting that it is the effective temperature of the jammed packing. However, we also show that the agreement of the effective temperature for different observables is only approximate, for very long times, suggesting that this defintion may not capture the full thermodynamics of the system. On the other hand, we find good agreement between the dynamical effective temperature and a compactivity calculated assuming that all jammed states are equiprobable. Therefore, this definition of temperature may capture an instance of the ergodic hypothesis for granular materials as proposed by theoretical formalisms for jamming. Finally, our simulations indicate that the average shear stress and apparent shear viscosity follow the usual relation with the shear rate for complex fluids. Our results show that the application of shear induces jamming in packings whose particles interact by tangential forces.