ABSTRACT
Many systems, including granular packings, glassy materials, and foams undergo a transition from a floppy, free flowing phase to a solid-like elastic phase as the appropriate parameters of the system are varied.The proposed interpretation in terms of a so-called “jamming transition” (Liu & Nagel 1998) has received a lot of attention because of its potential to be a common framework to describe particle systems with short range interactions of widely varying physical origin. The practical definition of the jammed state is that the internal stresses in the system are not relaxed to zero during experimentally available time scales. Dry granular media, with purely repulsive intergrain interactions, present ideal systems to study the jamming transition.
