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Article Dans Une Revue Physical Review E : Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics Année : 2012

Sculpting sandcastles grain by grain: Self-assembled sand towers

Résumé

We study the spontaneous formation of granular towers produced when dry sand is poured on a wet sand bed. When the liquid content of the bed exceeds a threshold value W*, the impacting grains have a nonzero probability to stick on the wet grains due to instantaneous liquid bridges created during the impact. The trapped grains become wet by the capillary ascension of water and the process continues, giving rise to stable narrow towers. The growth velocity is determined by the surface liquid content which decreases exponentially as the tower height augments. This self-assembly mechanism (only observed in the funicular and capillary regimes) could theoretically last while the capillary rise of water is possible; however, the structure collapses before reaching this limit. The collapse occurs when the weight of the tower surpasses the cohesive stress at its base. The cohesive stress increases as the liquid content of the bed is reduced. Consequently, the highest towers are found just above W*
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hal-04442970 , version 1 (06-02-2024)

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F. Pacheco-Vázquez, Florian Moreau, Nicolas Vandewalle, Stéphane Dorbolo. Sculpting sandcastles grain by grain: Self-assembled sand towers. Physical Review E : Statistical, Nonlinear, and Soft Matter Physics, 2012, 86 (5), pp.051303. ⟨10.1103/PhysRevE.86.051303⟩. ⟨hal-04442970⟩
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