The past decade has seen an explosive growth of interest in the physics of granular materials. Granular media are comprised of macroscopic objects with internal degrees of freedom. Granular assemblies exhibit phenomena that incorporate the properties of traditional solids, liquids and gases, making it a unique state. In many ways, the granular state is a generalized state of matter. This new volume from the Materials Research Society brings together researchers from many countries and disciplines to assess issues and problems concerned with the collective behavior of granular assemblies as encountered in the context of various applications. In particular, these applications include ceramic science, shock propagation and absorption, design and maintenance of stable natural and artificial structures, processing of pharmaceuticals, and self-assembly processes associated with the synthesis of ultrahigh-density magnetic tapes. The volume should be of value to researchers involved in exploring granular material-based technologies, and is expected to stimulate further research in this arena. Topics include: electromagnetic fields; structural issues; flow behavior; and dynamical problems.

Granular systems arise in a variety of geological and industrial settings, from landslides, avalanches, and erosion to agricultural grains and pharmaceutical powders. Understanding the underlying physics that governs their behavior is the key to developing effective handling and transport mechanisms as well as appropriate environmental policies.Han

Explaining the science contained in a simple assembly of grains—the most abundant form of matter present on Earth. Granular media—composed of vast amounts of grains, consolidated or not—constitute the most abundant form of solid matter on Earth. Granular materials assemble in disordered configurations scientists often liken to a bag of marbles. Made of macroscopic particles rather than molecules, they defy the standard scheme of classification in terms of solid, liquid, and gas. Granular materials provide a model relevant to various domains of research, including engineering, physics, and biology. William Blake famously wished “To See a World in a Grain of Sand”; in this book, pioneering researchers in granular matter explain the science hidden behind simple grains, shedding light on collective behavior in disordered settings in general. The authors begin by describing the single grain with its different origins, shapes, and sizes, then examine grains in piled or stacked form. They explain the packing fraction of granular media, a crucial issue that bears on the properties displayed in practical applications; explore small-scale deformations in piles of disordered grains, with particular attention to friction; and present theories of various modes of disorder. Along the way, they discuss such concepts as force chains, arching effects, wet grains, sticky contacts, and inertial effects. Drawing on recent numerical simulations as well as classical concepts developed in physics and mechanics, the book offers an accessible introduction to a rapidly developing field.

This book brings together in a single volume various methods and skills for particle-scale or discrete-element numerical simulation of granular media. It covers a broad range of topics from basic concepts and methods towards more advanced aspects and technical details applicable to the current research on granular materials. Discrete-element simulations of granular materials are based on four basic models (molecular dynamics, contact dynamics, quasi-static and event driven) dealing with frictional contact interactions and integration schemes for the equations of dynamics. These models are presented in the first chapters of the book, followed by various methods for sample preparation and monitoring of boundary conditions, as well as dimensionless control parameters. Granular materials encountered in real life involve a variety of compositions (particle shapes and size distributions) and interactions (cohesive, hydrodynamic, thermal) that have been extensively covered by several chapters. The book ends with two applications in the field of geo-materials.

This volume highlights the latest advances, innovations, and applications in the field of metal forming, as presented by leading international researchers and engineers at the 14th International Conference on Technology of Plasticity (ICTP), held in Mandelieu-La Napoule, France on September 24-29, 2023. It covers a diverse range of topics such as manufacturing processes & equipment, materials behavior and characterization, microstructure design by forming, surfaces & interfaces, control & optimization, green / sustainable metal forming technologies, digitalization & AI in metal forming, multi-material processing, agile / flexible metal forming processes, forming of non-metallic materials, micro-forming and luxury applications. The contributions, which were selected by means of a rigorous international peer-review process, present a wealth of exciting ideas that will open novel research directions and foster multidisciplinary collaboration among different specialists.

Granular materials are an integral part of our everyday life. They are also the base material for most industrial processing techniques. The highly dissipative nature of the particle collisions means energy input is needed in order to mobilize the grains. This interplay of dissipation and excitation leads to a wide variety of pattern formation processes, which are addressed in this book. The reader is introduced to this wide field by, first, a description of the material properties of granular materials under different experimental conditions that are important in connection with the pattern formation dynamics and, second, by further details given later on in the description of the specific system.

This book is devoted to the Discrete Element Method (DEM) technique, a discontinuum modelling approach that takes into account the fact that granular materials are composed of discrete particles which interact with each other at the microscale level. This numerical simulation technique can be used both for dispersed systems in which the particle-particle interactions are collisional and compact systems of particles with multiple enduring contacts. The book provides an extensive and detailed explanation of the theoretical background of DEM. Contact mechanics theories for elastic, elastic-plastic, adhesive elastic and adhesive elastic-plastic particle-particle interactions are presented. Other contact force models are also discussed, including corrections to some of these models as described in the literature, and important areas of further research are identified. A key issue in DEM simulations is whether or not a code can reliably simulate the simplest of systems, namely the single particle oblique impact with a wall. This is discussed using the output obtained from the contact force models described earlier, which are compared for elastic and inelastic collisions. In addition, further insight is provided for the impact of adhesive particles. The author then moves on to provide the results of selected DEM applications to agglomerate impacts, fluidised beds and quasi-static deformation, demonstrating that the DEM technique can be used (i) to mimic experiments, (ii) explore parameter sweeps, including limiting values, or (iii) identify new, previously unknown, phenomena at the microscale. In the DEM applications the emphasis is on discovering new information that enhances our rational understanding of particle systems, which may be more significant than developing a new continuum model that encompasses all microstructural aspects, which would most likely prove too complicated for practical implementation. The book will be of interest to academic and industrial researchers working in particle technology/process engineering and geomechanics, both experimentalists and theoreticians.

A "Sonderforschungsbereich" (SFB) is a programme of the "Deutsche For schungsgemeinschaft" to financially support a concentrated research effort of a number of scientists located principally at one University, Research La boratory or a number of these situated in close proximity to one another so that active interaction among individual scientists is easily possible. Such SFB are devoted to a topic, in our case "Deformation and Failure in Metallic and Granular M aterialK' , and financing is based on a peer reviewed proposal for three (now four) years with the intention of several prolongations after evaluation of intermediate progress and continuation reports. An SFB is terminated in general by a formal workshop, in which the state of the art of the achieved results is presented in oral or I and poster communications to which also guests are invited with whom the individual project investigators may have collaborated. Moreover, a research report in book form is produced in which a number of articles from these lectures are selected and collected, which present those research results that withstood a rigorous reviewing pro cess (with generally two or three referees). The theme deformation and failure of materials is presented here in two volumes of the Lecture Notes in Applied and Computational Mechanics by Springer Verlag, and the present volume is devoted to granular and porous continua. The complementary volume (Lecture Notes in Applied and Com putational Mechanics, vol. 10, Eds. K. HUTTER & H.