Self-Structuring of Granular Media under Internal Avalanches

TL;DR

This paper investigates internal avalanching in granular media using Tetris lattice models, revealing self-structured steady states with complex internal textures and critical behavior, supported by a mean-field theory exploring universality limits.

Contribution

It introduces a recycling dynamics model for granular media that results in self-structured steady states and develops a mean-field theory to analyze their critical behavior and universality breakdowns.

Findings

Steady states exhibit complex internal textures.

Avalanche behavior shows criticality.

Mean-field theory predicts universality breakdown scenarios.

Abstract

We study the phenomenon of internal avalanching within the context of recently proposed ``Tetris'' lattice models for granular media. We define a recycling dynamics under which the system reaches a steady state which is self-structured, i.e. it shows a complex interplay between textured internal structures and critical avalanche behavior. Furthermore we develop a general mean-field theory for this class of systems and discuss possible scenarios for the breakdown of universality.