International audienceWhile failure of cracked bodies with strong stress concentrations is described by an energy criterion (fracture mechanics), failure of flawless bodies with uniform stresses is captured by a criterion on stress (yielding). In-between those two cases, the problem of failure initiation from flaws that moderately concentrate stresses is debated. In this paper, we propose an investigation of the process of failure initiation at the atomic scale by means of molecular simulations. We first discuss the appropriate scaling conditions to capture initiation, since system sizes that can be simulated by molecular mechanics are strongly limited. Then, we perform a series of molecular simulations of failure of a 2D model material, which exhibits strength and toughness properties that are suitable to capture initiation with systems of reasonable sizes. Transition from fracture failure to yield failure is well characterized. Interestingly, in some specific cases, failure exceeds yield failure which is in contradiction with most initiation theories. This occurs when stress are highly concentrated while little mechanical energy is stored in the material. This observation calls for a theory of initiation which requires that both stress and energy are necessary conditions of failure. Such an approach was proposed by Leguillon (2002). We show that the predictions of this theory are consistent with the molecular simulation results

This letter deals with the transport of particles through granular assemblies and, specifically, with the intermittent formation of blockages originated from collective and purely mechanical clogging of constrictions. We perform numerical experiments with a microhydromechanical model that is able to reproduce the complex interplay between the carrier fluid, the transported particles and the granular assembly. The probability distribution functions (PDFs) of the duration of blockages and displacements give the time scale on which the effect of blockages is erased and the advection-dispersion paradigm is valid. Our experiments show that these PDFs fit exponential laws, reinforcing the idea that the formation and destruction of blockages are homogeneous Poisson processes.

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Given a granular system of slightly deformable particles, it is possible to obtain different static and jammed packings subjected to the same macroscopic constraints. These microstates can be compared in a mathematical space defined by the components of the force-moment tensor (i.e. the product of the equivalent stress by the volume of the Voronoi cell). In order to explain the statistical distributions observed there, an athermal ensemble theory can be used. This work proposes a formalism (based on developments of the original theory of Edwards and collaborators) that considers both the internal and the external constraints of the problem. The former give the density of states of the points of this space, and the latter give their statistical weight. The internal constraints are those caused by the intrinsic features of the system (e.g. size distribution, friction, cohesion). They, together with the force-balance condition, determine which the possible local states of equilibrium of a particle are. Under the principle of equal a priori probabilities, and when no other constraints are imposed, it can be assumed that particles are equally likely to be found in any one of these local states of equilibrium. Then a flat sampling over all these local states turns into a non-uniform distribution in the force-moment space that can be represented with density of states functions. Although these functions can be measured, some of their features are explored in this paper. The external constraints are those macroscopic quantities that define the ensemble and are fixed by the protocol. The force-moment, the volume, the elastic potential energy and the stress are some examples of quantities that can be expressed as functions of the force-moment. The associated ensembles are included in the formalism presented here.