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Joshua Socolar

Professor of Physics
Physics
Box 90305, 107 Physics Bldg, Durham, NC 27708-0305
096 Physics Bldg, Durham, NC 27708

Selected Publications


Quasicrystalline structure of the hat monotile tilings

Journal Article Physical Review B · December 1, 2023 Tiling models can reveal unexpected ways in which local constraints give rise to exotic long-range spatial structure. The recently discovered hat monotile (and its mirror image) has been shown to be aperiodic [Smith, arXiv:2303.10798]; it can tile the plan ... Full text Cite

Evolution of force networks during stick-slip motion of an intruder in a granular material: Topological measures extracted from experimental data.

Journal Article Physical review. E · November 2023 In quasi-two-dimensional experiments with photoelastic particles confined to an annular region, an intruder constrained to move in a circular path halfway between the annular walls experiences stick-slip dynamics. We discuss the response of the granular me ... Full text Cite

Microscopic reversibility and emergent elasticity in ultrastable granular systems

Journal Article Frontiers in Physics · November 28, 2022 In a recent paper (Zhao et al., Phys Rev X, 2022, 12: 031,021), we reported experimental observations of “ultrastable” states in a shear-jammed granular system subjected to small-amplitude cyclic shear. In such states, all the particle positions and contac ... Full text Cite

Stick-Slip Dynamics in a Granular Material With Varying Grain Angularity

Journal Article Frontiers in Physics · July 15, 2022 Experiments, simulations, and theoretical treatments of granular materials typically feature circular or elliptical grains. However, grains found in natural systems often have flat faces that introduce local rotational constraints; these rotational constra ... Full text Cite

Ultrastable Shear-Jammed Granular Material

Journal Article Physical Review X · July 1, 2022 Dry granular materials, such as sand, gravel, pills, or agricultural grains, can become rigid when compressed or sheared. Under isotropic compression, the material reaches a certain jamming density and then resists further compression. Shear jamming occurs ... Full text Cite

Universal features of the stick-slip dynamics of an intruder moving through a confined granular medium.

Journal Article Physical review. E · April 2022 Experiments and simulations of an intruder dragged by a spring through a two-dimensional annulus of granular material exhibit robust force fluctuations. At low packing fractions (ϕ<ϕ_{0}), the intruder clears an open channel. Above ϕ_{0}, stick-slip dynami ... Full text Cite

Random logic networks: From classical Boolean to quantum dynamics.

Journal Article Physical review. E · December 2021 We investigate dynamical properties of a quantum generalization of classical reversible Boolean networks. The state of each node is encoded as a single qubit, and classical Boolean logic operations are supplemented by controlled bit-flip and Hadamard opera ... Full text Open Access Cite

Two Approaches to Quantification of Force Networks in Particulate Systems

Journal Article Journal of Engineering Mechanics · November 1, 2021 The interactions between particles in dense particulate systems are organized in force networks, mesoscale features that influence the macroscopic response to applied stresses. The detailed structure of these networks is, however, difficult to extract from ... Full text Cite

Stress propagation in locally loaded packings of disks and pentagons.

Journal Article Soft matter · November 2021 The mechanical strength and flow of granular materials can depend strongly on the shapes of individual grains. We report quantitative results obtained from photoelasticimetry experiments on locally loaded, quasi-two-dimensional granular packings of either ... Full text Open Access Cite

Particle dynamics in two-dimensional point-loaded granular media composed of circular or pentagonal grains

Conference Powders and Grains 2021 - 9th International Conference on Micromechanics on Granular Media · June 7, 2021 Granular packings exhibit significant changes in rheological and structural properties when the rotational symmetry of spherical or circular particles is broken. Here, we report on experiments exploring the differences in dynamics of a grain-scale intruder ... Full text Cite

Ultra-stable shear jammed granular material

Journal Article Physical Review X · May 1, 2021 Dry granular materials such as sand, gravel, pills, or agricultural grains, can become rigid when compressed or sheared. At low density, one can distort the shape of a container of granular material without encountering any resistance. Under isotropic comp ... Link to item Cite

Static and dynamic features of granular material failure due to upward pulling of a buried sphere by a slowly increasing force.

Journal Article Soft matter · March 2021 A spherical intruder embedded in a confined granular column is extracted by pulling it upward by an attached string. As the tension of the string gradually increases, a failure event occurs at a certain pulling force, leading to rapid upward acceleration o ... Full text Cite

Yielding, rigidity, and tensile stress in sheared columns of hexapod granules.

Journal Article Physical review. E · June 2020 Granular packings of nonconvex or elongated particles can form freestanding structures like walls or arches. For some particle shapes, such as staples, the rigidity arises from interlocking of pairs of particles, but the origins of rigidity for noninterloc ... Full text Open Access Cite

Intruder in a two-dimensional granular system: Effects of dynamic and static basal friction on stick-slip and clogging dynamics.

Journal Article Physical review. E · January 2020 We present simulation results for an intruder pulled through a two-dimensional granular system by a spring using a model designed to mimic the experiments described by Kozlowski et al. [Phys. Rev. E 100, 032905 (2019)2470-004510.1103/PhysRevE.100.032905]. ... Full text Cite

Jamming transition in non-spherical particle systems: pentagons versus disks

Journal Article Granular Matter · November 1, 2019 We investigate the jamming transition in a quasi-2D granular material composed of regular pentagons or disks subjected to quasistatic uniaxial compression. We report six major findings based on experiments with monodisperse photoelastic particles with stat ... Full text Cite

Jamming by shear in a dilating granular system

Journal Article Granular Matter · November 1, 2019 Jamming can occur in frictional granular materials undergoing shear at a fixed packing fraction, ϕ, within a range below the isotropic jamming point, with the amount of strain required to induce jamming, γ, increasing with decreasing ϕ. We are interested i ... Full text Cite

Shear-Jammed, Fragile, and Steady States in Homogeneously Strained Granular Materials.

Journal Article Physical review letters · October 2019 We study the jamming phase diagram of sheared granular material using a novel Couette shear setup with a multiring bottom. The setup uses small basal friction forces to apply a volume-conserving linear shear with no shear band to a granular system composed ... Full text Cite

Dynamics of a grain-scale intruder in a two-dimensional granular medium with and without basal friction.

Journal Article Physical review. E · September 2019 We report on a series of experiments in which a grain-sized intruder is pushed by a spring through a two-dimensional granular material composed of photoelastic disks in a Couette geometry. We study the intruder dynamics as a function of packing fraction fo ... Full text Cite

Seismicity in sheared granular matter.

Journal Article Physical review. E · May 2019 We report on experiments investigating the dynamics of a slider that is pulled by a spring across a granular medium consisting of a vertical layer of photoelastic disks. The motion proceeds through a sequence of discrete events, analogous to seismic shocks ... Full text Cite