Berlin 2012 – scientific programme

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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik

DY 21: Granular Matter/Contact Dynamics

DY 21.3: Talk

Wednesday, March 28, 2012, 15:00–15:15, MA 144

Electrostatic precursors to granular slip events — •N Nirmal Thyagu^1,2 and Troy Shinbrot¹ — ¹Rutgers University, Piscataway, NJ 08854, USA — ²MPI-DS, Goettingen, Germany

For at least the past 40 years, reports have repeatedly appeared of atmospheric lightning and related effects preceding major earthquakes. Many of these reports are anecdotal and of uncertain reliability, while others appear to have been substantiated by more recent scientific electric field measurements. In this work, we describe laboratory experiments that appear to exhibit sporadic, but statistically significant, electrical precursors to granular slip events. The cause of this phenomenon is unclear: the materials used are neither piezoelectric nor triboluminescent. We speculate that the electrical signals may be related to other electrical phenomena known to be associated with material failures in other contexts, for example in crack formation and in tape peeling.