Symposium on "Mechanics of Granular Media: Experiments, Theory and Modelling" at SES 2018

We encourage you to contribute an abstract to the symposium "Mechanics of Granular Media: Experiments, Theory and Modelling" (Symposium 2.10) at the 55th Annual Technical Meeting of the Society of Engineering Science (SES) to be held in Madrid, Spain, October 10-12, 2018. The symposium description may be found below. For further details and to submit an abstract, please see the meeting website.

Meeting website: http://www.ses2018.org

Symposium webpage: http://www.ses2018.org/_medien/_content/files/abstract/2.10_MechanicsofGranularMedia.pdf

The abstract submission deadline is April 2, 2018.

It would be great to see you there!

Stephan Luding, Twente

Deepak Tunuguntla, Twente

David Henann, Brown

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Granular materials are ubiquitous in industry and as geomaterials in nature, displaying a variety of distinct phenomena due to their frictional/dissipative nature. The presence of attractive forces due to van der Waals interactions or liquid bridges enriches the phenomenology further. Macroscopically, granular materials are capable of both solid-like and fluid-like behavior – e.g., elasto-visco-plastic behavior, shear-banding/localization, and fabric evolution due to evolving contact networks for the former and rate-sensitive rheological behavior depending on loading conditions and the internal material state for the latter. The varied behavior of granular materials at the macroscopic, continuum scale stems from the rich physics at the microstructural scale; however, understanding the underlying microscale mechanics and physics and the connections between the micro and continuum scales remain unresolved issues of current research. Experiments, theory and (particle and continuum) modeling aimed at a deeper understanding of granular materials are necessary for improving continuum-level modeling for large-scale applications. This symposium shall focus on the current state-of-the-art of research in the mechanics and physics of granular materials at length-scales ranging from the contact level via the discrete particle-size to the (macro) continuum scale. Topics of interest include homogenization approaches towards continuum modeling and novel continuum theories based on plasticity or rheology.