A network model of geometrically constrained deformations of granular materials (Q939237)

The authors study a network model of quasi-static deformation of pre-stressed dense granular material. The packing is represented by a network of point masses corresponding to particles, and each spring corresponds to a contact between two particles. The constraints have the form of linear inequalities, or strict inequalities if inactive constraint. Constraints are in one-to-one correspondence with inter particle contacts. The active constraint corresponds to a relatively stable solid-like contact, while the inactive constraints correspond to relatively weak broken contacts. One have to estimate the minimal number of solid-like contacts in the energy-minimizing configuration. It is shown that each interior vortex of the network has at least two solid-like contacts. The result implies a lower bound on order parameters in terms of the total number of edges and total number of vortices. The result is a first step in the direction of derivation of continuum models of order parameters.