Dresden 2011 – scientific programme
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 22: Granular Matter/ Contact Dynamics
DY 22.10: Talk
Wednesday, March 16, 2011, 16:30–16:45, HÜL 186
Tailoring the frictional properties of granular media — •Sonia Utermann1,2, Philipp Aurin1, Markus Benderoth1, and Matthias Schröter1 — 1Max Planck Institute for Dynamics and Self-organization — 2Georg-August-Universität Göttingen
Where the theorist often neglects friction, this most intriguing of granular interactions, the experimentalist cannot, and instead must embrace it. Here, we go a step further and develop a protocol which allows us to use friction between grains as an experimental control parameter. We present two simple chemical etching procedures which alter the roughness of soda-lime glass spheres: a procedure to smoothen the surface and one to roughen it. The roughness has an influence on the frictional properties of the grains because it alters the topology and size of the microscopic contacts between grains. We characterise the spheres using white light interferometry. Additional underwater angle-of-repose measurements on our etched samples give us a measure of frictional properties in the bulk.