Formation, Propagation, and Attenuation of Shocks Waves in Jammed Matter

L. R. GÓMEZ; V. VITELLI

Boston

Conferencia; March Meeting of The American Physical Society; 2012

American physical Society

We study the formation and propagation of fullynon-linear waves in jammed granular media. Close to the jamming point,an arbitrary initial distortion of the media will induce the formation ofnon-linear finite amplitude waves. There are two regimes in the evolutionof these waves. At early times non-linear interactions dominate thepropagation, leading to a temporal evolution strongly dependent on theinitial distortion. At long times the propagation is characterized by anew universal regime, dominated by hydrodynamical attenuation. Herethe non-linear waves evolve in a self-similar fashion, characterized bya power law attenuation whose exponent is weakly dependent on theinitial pressure of the system.