We have discovered a new family of three-dimensional crystal sphere packings that are strictly jammed (i.e., mechanically stable) and yet possess an anomalously low density. This family constitutes an uncountably infinite number of crystal packings that are subpackings of the densest crystal packings and are characterized by a high concentration of self-avoiding "tunnels" (chains of vacancies) that permeate the structures. The fundamental geometric characteristics of these tunneled crystals command interest in their own right and are described here in some detail. These include the lattice vectors (that specify the packing configurations), coordination structure, Voronoi cells, and density fluctuations. The tunneled crystals are not only candidate structures for achieving the jamming threshold (lowest-density rigid packing), but may have substantially broader significance for condensed matter physics and materials science.
Granular packings display the remarkable phenomenon of dilatancy [1], wherein their volume increases upon shear deformation. Conventional wisdom and previous results suggest that dilatancy, as also the related phenomenon of shear-induced jamming, requires frictional interactions [2, 3]. Here, we investigate the occurrence of dilatancy and shear jamming in frictionless packings. We show that the existence of isotropic jamming densities ϕj above the minimal density, the J-point density ϕJ [4, 5], leads both to the emergence of shear-induced jamming and dilatancy. Packings at ϕJ form a significan…
We study the origin of the scaling behavior in frictionless granular media above the jamming transition by analyzing their linear response. The response to local forcing is non-self-averaging and fluctuates over a length scale that diverges at the jamming transition. The response to global forcing becomes increasingly non-affine near the jamming transition. This is due to the proximity of floppy modes, the influence of which we characterize by the local linear response. We show that the local response also governs the anomalous scaling of elastic constants and contact number.
We investigate experimentally the mechanical response of a monolayer of bi-disperse frictional grains to an inhomogeneous shear perturbation across the jamming transition. We inflate an intruder inside the packing and use photo-elasticity and tracking techniques to measure the induced shear strain and stresses at the grain scale. We quantify experimentally the constitutive relations for strain amplitudes as low as 0.001 and for a range of packing fractions within 2% variation around the jamming transition. At the transition strong nonlinear effects set in : both the shear modulus and the dilat…
The concept of jamming has attracted great research interest due to its broad relevance in soft matter such as liquids, glasses, colloids, foams, and granular materials, and its deep connection to the sphere packing problem and optimization problems. Here we show that the domain of amorphous jammed states of frictionless spheres can be significantly extended, from the well-known jamming-point at a fixed density, to a jamming-plane that spans the density and shear strain axes. We explore the jamming-plane, via athermal and thermal simulations of compression and shear jamming, with a help of an …
An exact description of the complete jamming landscape is developed for a system of hard discs of diameter $σ$, confined between two lines separated by a distance $1+\sqrt{3/4} < H/σ< 2$. By considering all possible local packing arrangements, the generalized ensemble partition function of jammed states is obtained using the transfer matrix method, which allows us to calculate the configurational entropy and the equation of state for the packings. Exploring the relationship between structural order and packing density, we find that the geometric frustration between local packing environments p…
By minimizing the enthalpy of packings of frictionless particles, we obtain jammed solids at desired pressures and hence investigate the jamming transition with and without shear. Typical scaling relations of the jamming transition are recovered in both cases. In contrast to systems without shear, shear-driven jamming transition occurs at a higher packing fraction and the jammed solids are more rigid with an anisotropic force network. Furthermore, by introducing the macro-friction coefficient, we propose an explanation of the packing fraction gap between sheared and non-sheared systems at fixe…
The role of friction coefficient, $μ$, on the jamming properties of disordered, particle packings is studied using computer simulations. Compressed, soft-sphere packings are brought towards the jamming transition - the point where a packing loses mechanical stability - by decreasing the packing fraction. The values of the packing fraction at the jamming transition, $ϕ^μ_{c}$, gradually decrease from the random close packing point for zero friction, to a value coincident with random loose packing as the friction coefficient is increased over several orders of magnitude. This is accompanied by a…
We analyze the jamming transition that occurs as a function of increasing packing density in a disordered two-dimensional assembly of disks at zero temperature for ``Point J'' of the recently proposed jamming phase diagram. We measure the total number of moving disks and the transverse length of the moving region, and find a power law divergence as the packing density increases toward a critical jamming density. This provides evidence that the T = 0 jamming transition as a function of packing density is a {\it second order} phase transition. Additionally we find evidence for multiscaling, indi…
We propose a theoretical framework for predicting the protocol dependence of the jamming transition for frictionless spherical particles that interact via purely repulsive contact forces. We study isostatic jammed disk packings obtained via two protocols: isotropic compression and simple shear. We show that for frictionless systems, all jammed packings can be obtained via either protocol. However, the probability to obtain a particular jammed packing depends on the packing-generation protocol. We predict the average shear strain required to induce jamming in initially unjammed packings from th…
Athermal packings of soft repulsive spheres exhibit a sharp jamming transition in the thermodynamic limit. Upon further compression, various structural and mechanical properties display clean power-law behavior over many decades in pressure. As with any phase transition, the rounding of such behavior in finite systems close to the transition plays an important role in understanding the nature of the transition itself. The situation for jamming is surprisingly rich: the assumption that jammed packings are isotropic is only strictly true in the large-size limit, and finite-size has a profound ef…
We study the internal dynamical processes taking place in a granular packing below yield stress. At all packing fractions and down to vanishingly low applied shear, a logarithmic creep is evidenced. The experiments are analyzed under the scope of a visco-elastic model introducing an internal "fluidity" variable. For all experiments, the creep dynamics can be rescaled onto a unique curve which displays jamming at the random-close-packing limit. At each packing fraction, a stress value is evidenced, corresponding to the onset of internal granular reorganisation leading to a slowing down the cree…
The formation of self-organised structures that resist shear deformation have been discussed in the context of shear jamming and thickening[1-3], with frictional forces playing a key role. However, shear induces geometric features necessary for jamming even in frictionless packings[4]. We analyse conditions for jamming in such assemblies by solving force and torque balance conditions for their contact geometry. We demonstrate, and validate with frictional simulations, that the isostatic condition for mean contact number Z = D + 1 (for spatial dimension D = 2, 3) holds at jamming for both finit…
This paper illustrates how the tools of equilibrium statistical mechanics can help to explain a far-from-equilibrium problem: the jamming transition in frictionless granular materials. Edwards ideas consist of proposing a statistical ensemble of volume and stress fluctuations through the thermodynamic notion of entropy, compactivity, X, and angoricity, A (two temperature-like variables). We find that Edwards thermodynamics is able to describe the jamming transition (J-point). Using the ensemble formalism we elucidate the following: (i)We test the combined volume-stress ensemble by comparing th…
We answer the questions raised by Donev, Torquato, Stillinger, and Connelly in their "Comment on "Jamming at zero temperature and zero applied stress: The epitome of disorder.' " We emphasize that we follow a fundamentally different approach than they have done to reinterpret random close packing in terms of the "maximally random jammed" framework. We define the "maximally random jammed packing fraction" to be where the largest number of initial states, chosen completely randomly, have relaxed final states at the jamming threshold in the thermodynamic limit. Thus, we focus on an ensemble of st…
We show that the maximum entropy hypothesis can successfully explain the distribution of stresses on compact clusters of particles within disordered mechanically stable packings of soft, isotropically stressed, frictionless disks above the jamming transition. We show that, in our two dimensional case, it becomes necessary to consider not only the stress but also the Maxwell-Cremona force-tile area, as a constraining variable that determines the stress distribution. The importance of the force-tile area had been suggested by earlier computations on an idealized force-network ensemble.
We numerically simulate mechanically stable packings of soft-core, frictionless, bidisperse disks in two dimensions, above the jamming packing fraction $ϕ_J$. For configurations with a fixed isotropic global stress tensor, we compute the averages, variances, and correlations of conserved quantities (stress $Γ_{\cal C}$, force-tile area $A_{\cal C}$, Voronoi volume $V_{\cal C}$, number of particles $N_{\cal C}$, and number of small particles $N_{s{\cal C}}$) on compact subclusters of particles ${\cal C}$, as a function of the cluster size and the global system stress. We find several significan…
We determine the form of the complex shear modulus $G^*$ in soft sphere packings near jamming. Viscoelastic response at finite frequency is closely tied to a packing's intrinsic relaxational modes, which are distinct from the vibrational modes of undamped packings. We demonstrate and explain the appearance of an anomalous excess of slowly relaxing modes near jamming, reflected in a diverging relaxational density of states. From the density of states, we derive the dependence of $G^*$ on frequency and distance to the jamming transition, which is confirmed by numerics.
We investigate experimentally the mechanical response to shear of a 2D packing of grains across the jamming transition. First, we develop a dedicated experimental setup, together with tracking and photoelastic techniques in order to prepare the packing in a controlled fashion and to quantify the stress and strain tensors at the grain scale. Second, we install a inflating probe (a 2D "balloon"), which shears the packing with a cylindrical symmetry. We probe experimentally stresses and strains for strain amplitudes as low as $10^{-3}$ and for a range of packing fractions within $2\%$ variation a…
We have performed a novel experiment on granular packs composed of automatically swelling particles. By analyzing the Voronoi structure of packs going through the jamming transition, we show that the local configuration of a jamming pack is strikingly similar to that of a glass-forming liquid, both in terms of their universal area distribution and the process of defect annealing. Furthermore, we demonstrate that an unambiguous structural signature of the jamming transition can be obtained from the pair correlation functions of a pack. Our study provides insights into the structural properties …
We provide a comprehensive picture of the jamming phase diagram by connecting the athermal, granular ensemble of jammed states and the equilibrium fluid through the inherent structure paradigm for a system hard discs confined to a narrow channel. The J-line is shown to be divided into packings that are thermodynamically accessible from the equilibrium fluid and inaccessible packings. The J-point is found to occur at the transition between these two sets of packings and is located at the maximum the inherent structure distribution. A general thermodynamic argument suggests that the density of t…
We show that non-Brownian suspensions of repulsive spheres below jamming display a slow relaxational dynamics with a characteristic time scale that diverges at jamming. This slow time scale is fully encoded in the structure of the unjammed packing and can be readily measured via the vibrational density of states. We show that the corresponding dynamic critical exponent is the same for randomly generated and sheared packings. Our results show that a wide variety of physical situations, from suspension rheology to algorithmic studies of the jamming transition are controlled by a unique diverging…
We present a theoretical prediction on random close packing factor ϕ_RCP^b of binary granular packings based on the hard-sphere fluid theory. An unexplored regime is unravelled, where the packing fraction ϕ_RCP^b is smaller than that of the mono-sized one ϕ_RCP^m, i.e., the so-called loose jamming state. This is against our common perception that binary packings should always reach a denser packing than mono-sized packings at the jamming state. Numerical evidence further supports this prediction and confirms the regime location in the size ratio and mole fraction (R_r-X_s) space, where the siz…
We study the rheology of amorphous packings of soft, frictionless particles close to jamming. Implementing a quasistatic simulation method we generate a well defined ensemble of states that directly samples the system at its yield-stress. A continuous jamming transition from a freely-flowing state to a yield stress situation takes place at a well defined packing fraction, where the scaling laws characteristic of isostatic solids are observed. We propose that long-range correlations observed below the transition are dominated by this isostatic point, while those that are observed above the tran…
We compare the structural and mechanical properties of static packings composed of frictionless convex (ellipses) and concave (rigid dimers) particles in two dimensions. We employ numerical simulations to generate static packings and measure the shear stress in response to applied simple shear strain as a function of the aspect ratio and amount of compression. We find that the behavior near jamming is significantly different for ellipses and dimers even though both shapes are roughly characterized by the aspect ratio and possess the same number of translational and rotational degrees of freedo…
We study the structural and mechanical properties of jammed ellipse packings, and find that the nature of the jamming transition in these systems is fundamentally different from that for spherical particles. Ellipse packings are generically hypostatic with more degrees of freedom than constraints. The spectra of low energy excitations possess two gaps and three distinct branches over a range of aspect ratios. In the zero compression limit, the energy of the modes in the lowest branch increases {\it quartically} with deformation amplitude, and the density of states possesses a $δ$-function at z…
We investigate the jamming transition in packings of emulsions and granular materials via molecular dynamics simulations. The emulsion model is composed of frictionless droplets interacting via nonlinear normal forces obtained using experimental data acquired by confocal microscopy of compressed emulsions systems. Granular materials are modeled by Hertz-Mindlin deformable spherical grains with Coulomb friction. In both cases, we find power-law scaling for the vanishing of pressure and excess number of contacts as the system approaches the jamming transition from high volume fractions. We find …
Dynamical signatures are known to precede jamming in hard-particle systems, but static structural signatures have proven more elusive. The observation that compressing hard-particle packings towards jamming causes growing hyperuniformity has paved the way for the analysis of jamming as an "inverted critical point" in which the direct correlation function $c(r)$ diverges. We establish quantitative relationships between various singularities in $c(r)$ and the total correlation function $h(r)$ that provide a concrete means of identifying features that must be expressed in $c(r)$ if one hopes to r…
We numerically simulate mechanically stable packings of soft-core, frictionless, bidisperse disks in two dimensions, above the jamming packing fraction phi_J. For configurations with a fixed isotropic global stress tensor, we investigate the fluctuations of the local packing fraction phi(r) to test whether such configurations display the hyperuniformity that has been claimed to exist exactly at phi_J. For our configurations, generated by a rapid quench protocol, we find that hyperuniformity persists only out to a finite length scale, and that this length scale appears to remain finite as the s…
As a function of packing fraction at zero temperature and applied stress, an amorphous packing of spheres exhibits a jamming transition where the system is sensitive to boundary conditions even in the thermodynamic limit. Upon further compression, the system should become insensitive to boundary conditions provided it is sufficiently large. Here we explore the linear response to a large class of boundary perturbations in 2 and 3 dimensions. We consider each finite packing with periodic-boundary conditions as the basis of an infinite square or cubic lattice and study properties of vibrational m…
Amorphous systems of soft particles above jamming have more contacts than are needed to achieve mechanical equilibrium. The force network of a granular system with a fixed contact network is thus underdetermined, and can be characterized as a random instantiation within the space of the force network ensemble. In this work, we show that by examining the boundaries of this space of allowed force networks, defect contacts which are not necessary for stability of the system can be uniquely identified. We further show that in the near jamming limit, this identification is nearly always correct and…
We investigate the existence of random close and random loose packing limits in two-dimensional packings of monodisperse hard disks. A statistical mechanics approach-- based on several approximations to predict the probability distribution of volumes-- suggests the existence of the limiting densities of the jammed packings according to their coordination number and compactivity. This result has implications for the understanding of disordered states in the disk packing problem as well as the existence of a putative glass transition in two dimensional systems.
We present an analysis of finite-size effects in jammed packings of N soft, frictionless spheres at zero temperature. There is a 1/N correction to the discrete jump in the contact number at the transition so that jammed packings exist only above isostaticity. As a result, the canonical power-law scalings of the contact number and elastic moduli break down at low pressure. These quantities exhibit scaling collapse with a non-trivial scaling function, demonstrating that the jamming transition can be considered a phase transition. Scaling is achieved as a function of N in both 2 and 3 dimensions,…
We numerically investigate the mechanical properties of static packings of ellipsoidal particles in 2D and 3D over a range of aspect ratio and compression $Δϕ$. While amorphous packings of spherical particles at jamming onset ($Δϕ=0$) are isostatic and possess the minimum contact number $z_{\rm iso}$ required for them to be collectively jammed, amorphous packings of ellipsoidal particles generally possess fewer contacts than expected for collective jamming ($z < z_{\rm iso}$) from naive counting arguments, which assume that all contacts give rise to linearly independent constraints on interpar…
Jammed particulate systems composed of various shapes of particles undergo the jamming transition as they are compressed or decompressed. To date, sphere packings have been extensively studied in many previous works, where isostaticity at the transition and scaling laws with the pressure of various quantities, including the contact number and the vibrational density of states, have been established. Additionally, much attention has been paid to nonspherical packings, and particularly recent work has made progress in understanding ellipsoidal packings. In the present work, we study the dimer pa…
We investigate the flow and jamming through small apertures of a column of granular disks via a pseudo-dynamic model. We focus on the effect that the preparation of the granular assembly has on the size of the avalanches obtained. Ensembles of packings with different mean packing fractions are created by tapping the system at different intensities. Surprisingly, packing fraction is not a good indicator of the ability of the deposit to jam a given orifice. Different mean avalanche sizes are obtained for deposits with the same mean packing fraction that were prepared with very different tap inte…
In the late 1980s, Sam Edwards proposed a possible statistical-mechanical framework to describe the properties of disordered granular materials. A key assumption underlying the theory was that all jammed packings are equally likely. In the intervening years it has never been possible to test this bold hypothesis directly. Here we present simulations that provide direct evidence that at the unjamming point, all packings of soft repulsive particles are equally likely, even though generically, jammed packings are not. Typically, jammed granular systems are observed precisely at the unjamming poin…
Self-organization, and transitions from reversible to irreversible behaviour, of interacting particle assemblies driven by externally imposed stresses or deformation is of interest in comprehending diverse phenomena in soft matter. They have been investigated in a wide range of systems, such as colloidal suspensions, glasses, and granular matter. In different density and driving regimes, such behaviour is related to yielding of amorphous solids, jamming, and memory formation, \emph{etc.} How these phenomena are related to each other has not, however, been much studied. In order to obtain a uni…
Amorphous packings of spheres have been intensely investigated in order to understand the mechanical and flow behaviour of dense granular matter, and to explore universal aspects of the transition from fluid to structurally arrested or jammed states. Considerable attention has recently been focussed on anisotropic packings of frictional grains generated by shear deformation leading to shear jamming, which occurs below the jamming density for isotropic packings of frictionless grains. With the aim of disentangling the role of shear deformation induced structures and friction in generating shear…
We study the vibrational modes of three-dimensional jammed packings of soft ellipsoids of revolution as a function of particle aspect ratio $ε$ and packing fraction. At the jamming transition for ellipsoids, as distinct from the idealized case using spheres where $ε= 1$, there are many unconstrained and non-trivial rotational degrees of freedom. These constitute a set of zero-frequency modes that are gradually mobilized into a new rotational band as $|ε- 1|$ increases. Quite surprisingly, as this new band is separated from zero frequency by a gap, and lies below the onset frequency for transla…
We experimentally study the vicinity of the Jamming transition by investigating the statics and the dynamics of the contact network of an horizontally shaken bi-disperse packing of photo-elastic discs. Compressing the packing very slowly, while maintaining a mechanical excitation, yields a granular glass, namely a frozen structure of vibrating grains. In this glass phase, we observe a remarkable dynamics of the contact network, which exhibits strong dynamical heterogeneities. Such heterogeneities are maximum at a packing fraction $ϕ^*$, \emph{distinct} and smaller than the jamming packing frac…
Using confocal microscopy we investigate the effect of attraction on the packing of polydisperse emulsions under gravity. We find that the distributions of neighbors, coordination number, and local packing fraction as a function of attraction are captured by recently proposed geometrical modeling and statistical mechanics approaches to granular matter. This extends the range of applicability of these tools to polydisperse, attractive jammed packings. Furthermore, the dependence of packing density and average coordination number on the strength of attraction provides the first experimental test…
Mechanically stable sphere packings are generated in three-dimensional space using the discrete element method, which span a wide range in structural order, ranging from fully amorphous to quasi-ordered structures, as characterized by the bond orientational order parameter. As the packing pressure, $p$, varies from the marginally rigid limit at the jamming transition ($p \approx 0$) to that of more robust systems ($p \gg 0$), the coordination number, $z$, follows a familiar scaling relation with pressure, namely, $Δz = z - z_c \sim p^{1/2}$, where $z_c = 2d = 6$ ($d=3$ is the spatial dimension…
We study the dependence of the pair-correlation function, $g(r)$, and particle mobility on packing fraction in a dense three-dimensional packing of soft colloids made of poly N-isopropyl acrylamide (pNIPAM), a thermo-sensitive gel. We find that $g(r)$ for our samples is qualitatively like that of a liquid at all packing fractions. There is a peak in $g_{1}$, the height of the first peak of $g(r)$, as a function of packing fraction. This peak is identified as the thermal remnant of the T=0 divergence found at the jamming transition in simulations of soft frictionless spheres at zero-temperature…
We investigate experimentally the dynamics of an intruder dragged by a constant force in an assembly of horizontally vibrated grains close to jamming. At moderate packing fractions, the intruder moves rapidly as soon as the force is applied. Above some threshold value of the packing fraction which increases with the applied force, the intruder exhibits an intermittent creep motion with strong fluctuations reminiscent of a crackling noise signal. These fluctuations behave in a critical manner at the jamming transition unveilled in a previous study. The transition separates a regime where the in…
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 s…
By exploring the properties of the energy landscape of a bidisperse system of soft harmonic disks in two dimensions we determine the thermal jamming transition. To be specific, we study whether the ground state of the system where the particle do not overlap can be reached within a reasonable time. Starting with random initial configurations, the energy landscape is probed by energy minimization steps as in case of athermal jamming and in addition steps where an energy barrier can be crossed with a small but non-zero probability. For random initial conditions we find that as a function of pack…
A recent proposal in which the equation of state of a polydisperse hard-sphere mixture is mapped onto that of the one-component fluid is extrapolated beyond the freezing point to estimate the jamming packing fraction $ϕ_\text{J}$ of the polydisperse system as a simple function of $M_1M_3/M_2^2$, where $M_k$ is the $k$th moment of the size distribution. An analysis of experimental and simulation data of $ϕ_\text{J}$ for a large number of different mixtures shows a remarkable general agreement with the theoretical estimate. To give extra support to the procedure, simulation data for seventeen mi…
We investigated the effects of particle shape on shear thickening in densely packed suspensions. Rods of different aspect ratios and non-convex hooked rods were fabricated. Viscosity curves and normal stresses were measured using a rheometer for a wide range of packing fractions for each shape. Suspensions of each shape exhibit qualitatively similar Discontinuous Shear Thickening. The logarithmic slope of the stress/shear-rate relation increases dramatically with packing fraction and diverges at a critical packing fraction phi_c which depends on particle shape. The packing fraction dependence …
We comprehensively study mechanical and vibrational properties of dimer packings in three-dimensional space with particular attention on critical scaling behaviors near the jamming transition. First, we confirm the dependence of the packing fraction at the transition on the aspect ratio, the isostatic contact number at the transition, and the scaling dependence of the excess contact number on the excess density. Second, we study the elastic moduli, bulk and shear moduli, and establish power-law scaling of them. Finally, we study the vibrational density of states and its characteristic frequenc…
A jammed packing of frictionless spheres at zero temperature is perfectly specified by the network of contact forces from which mechanical properties can be derived. However, we can alternatively consider a packing as a geometric structure, characterized by a Voronoi tessellation which encodes the local environment around each particle. We find that this local environment characterizes systems both above and below jamming and changes markedly at the transition. A variety of order parameters derived from this tessellation carry signatures of the jamming transition, complete with scaling exponen…
Amorphous packings of non-spherical particles such as ellipsoids and spherocylinders are known to be hypostatic: the number of mechanical contacts between particles is smaller than the number of degrees of freedom, thus violating Maxwell's mechanical stability criterion. In this work, we propose a general theory of hypostatic amorphous packings and the associated jamming transition. First, we show that many systems fall into a same universality class. As an example, we explicitly map ellipsoids into a system of `breathing' particles. We show by using a marginal stability argument that in both …
We study numerically the phases and dynamics of a dense collection of self-propelled particles with soft repulsive interactions in two dimensions. The model is motivated by recent in vitro experiments on confluent monolayers of migratory epithelial and endothelial cells. The phase diagram exhibits a liquid phase with giant number fluctuations at low packing fraction and high self-propulsion speed and a jammed phase at high packing fraction and low self-propulsion speed. The dynamics of the jammed phase is controlled by the low frequency modes of the jammed packing.
