Isostatic Phase Transition and Instability in Stiff Granular Materials
Isostatic Phase Transition and Instability in Stiff Granular Materials
In this letter, structural rigidity concepts are used to understand the origin of instabilities in granular aggregates. It is shown that: a) The contact network of a noncohesive granular aggregate becomes exactly isostatic in the limit of large stiffness-to-load ratio. b) Isostaticity is responsible for the anomalously large susceptibility to …