Stress correlations in frictional granular media

Abstract

This paper investigates whether in frictional granular packings, like in Hamiltonian amorphous elastic solids, the stress autocorrelation matrix presents long range anisotropic contributions just as elastic Green’s functions. We find that in a standard model of frictional granular packing this is not the case. We prove quite generally that mechanical balance and material isotropy constrain the stress autocorrelation matrix to be fully determined by two spatially isotropic functions: the pressure and torque autocorrelations. The pressure and torque fluctuations being, respectively, normal and hyperuniform force the stress autocorrelation to decay as the elastic Green’s function. Since we find the torque fluctuations to be hyperuniform, the culprit is the pressure whose fluctuations decay slower than normally as a function of the system’s size. Investigating the reason for these abnormal pressure fluctuations we discover that anomalous correlations build up already during the compression of the dilute system before jamming. Once jammed these correlations remain frozen. Whether this is true for frictional matter in general or it is the consequence of the model properties is a question that must await experimental scrutiny and possible alternative models.