https://doi.org/10.1051/epjconf/202534004007
Self-organization, detailed balance, and stress-structure correlations in 2D granular dynamics
1 Gonville & Caius College, University of Cambridge, Trinity Street, Cambridge CB2 1TA, UK
2 Faculty of Engineering, Information and Systems, University of Tsukuba, Ibaraki 305-8573, Japan
3 School of Physics and Astronomy, Shanghai Jiao Tong University, Shanghai 200240, China
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Published online: 1 December 2025
Abstract
We argue that a suite of recent experimental and numerical observations are signatures of cooperative stress-structure self-organisation (SO) in granular dynamics. These observations include: a) detail-insensitive collapses of certain quantities; b) correlations between stress and structure and evidence of entropy-stability competition in settled packings, which cast doubt on most linear stress theories of granular materials; c) detailed balanced steady states, which seem contradictory to the common belief that only systems in thermal equilibrium satisfy detailed balance, but are not, as we explain. We then propose a new statistical mechanical formulation that takes into account the cooperative SO.
© The Authors, published by EDP Sciences, 2025
This is an Open Access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License 4.0, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited.
