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A response function perspective on yielding of

wet granular matter
S. H. Ebrahimnazhad Rahbari, J. Vollmer, S. Herminghaus
and M. Brinkmann
EPL, 87 (2009) 14002

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 July 2009
EPL, 87 (2009) 14002 www.epljournal.org
doi: 10.1209/0295-5075/87/14002

A response function perspective on yielding of wet

granular matter
S. H. Ebrahimnazhad Rahbari, J. Vollmer(a) , S. Herminghaus and M. Brinkmann
Max-Planck-Institute for Dynamics and Self-Organization, Department of Complex Fluids
37073 Göttingen, Germany, EU

received 6 April 2009; accepted in final form 22 June 2009

published online 24 July 2009

PACS 45.70.-n – Granular systems

PACS 62.20.M- – Structural failure of materials
PACS 68.08.Bc – Wetting

Abstract – When dry ganular matter is tilted beyond a critical angle θc , grains start to flow until
a state is reached where the slope of the surface is smaller than θc . In dry granulates this relaxation
preferentially involves surface fluxes. In contrast wet granulates yield in the bulk. We uncover the
origin of this behaviour by focusing on the structure of the balance equations of the forces, rather
than applying a continuum model. The predictive power of the approach is demonstrated by a
parameter-free prediction of the yielding of 2D packings with thermal motion and mass disorder.

c EPLA, 2009
Copyright 

Introduction. – Soil can be viewed as a granular pack-
ing, where individual grains are held together by fric-
tional and cohesive forces [1,2]. For submillimetric grains
this cohesion is predominantly caused by liquid bridges
which give rise to capillary forces between neighbouring
grains [3–5]. In spite of the fact that the microscopic
details of this interaction are complex, it turned out that
the statistic features of wet granular matter are very well
described by a minimal model assuming a constant force
which is switched on immediately after a collision, and
persists until a cut-off distance ℓ is reached where the
capillary bridge ruptures [1,6,7].
In contrast to the dynamic properties of wet [1,2,8]
and dry granular matter [9,10], and the statics of dry
granular matter [11–13] there have still been considerably
less efforts to explore in how far stresses and forces in wet
granular matter can be understood from a physical point
of view. In the present paper we generalise the response
function formalism developed to describe forces and the
rigidity of dry granular matter [13–16] to wet systems.
This provides interesting insights into the breakdown of
its mechanical stability [4,17], which is discussed in the
following for a wet granular packing on an inclined plane
(fig. 1(a)).
The formalism applies to general isostatic packings with
mass and size disorder. However, for conciseness only appl-
Packings and forces. – We consider spherical grains
subject to a gravitational force giving rise to acceleration
g, a strong short-range repulsive binary force and attrac-
tive capillary bridge forces. Friction between the grains is
neglected.
Let Fi be an external force (i.e., gravity) acting on grain
i, and fij = fij eij be the force exerted by grain i on j. Here,
eij is a unit vector pointing from grain i to j, and fij the
magnitude of the force. The latter is positive for a repulsive
interaction, and it takes the constant negative value fb
when there is a stretched capillary bridge1 . The force fij
vanishes for all pairs ij of grains that do not interact, i.e.,
in the vast majority of cases. Due to Newton’s 3rd law
the force is symmetric in its indices, i.e. , fij = fji . We
explore now the consequences of the fact that in a stable
stationary system the forces acting on each grain must
vanish:

fij = Fi , for all i. (1)
j
When the geometry of the network and the external forces
acting on the grains are given, this equation can also be
written as

eα α
ij fij = Fi , for all i, α, (2)
j

ications to two-dimensional packings of grains with differ- 1 This is a simplification since the capillary force is known to
ent masses are discussed in the present communication. depend on grain separation [6,7]. However, it has been shown [1]
that the assumption of a constant force provides a surprisingly good
(a) E-mail: juergen.vollmer@ds.mpg.de description of the collective behaviour of wet grains.

14002-p1
S. H. Ebrahimnazhad Rahbari et al.

Fig. 1: (Colour on-line) (a) Regular packing of grains with a non-trivial height profile. The grains in the lower-most row (shaded
in green) are fixed, they form a wall supporting the pile. The others move when θ is increased beyond the critical slope θc .
(b) Forces acting on the topmost grain of an elementary tree: eup and edown are unit vectors towards the neighbours support-
ing the grain, and α and β the respective angles with respect to the wall-normal direction ex . (c) Elementary force tree for
θ > β where the force f up takes negative values. There are tensile forces acting at the indicated capillary bridges along the uphill
edge of the elementary force tree. The force balance for the grain at the top of the tree amounts to f up eup + f down edown = mg.
For a periodic packing the forces propagate along straight lines towards the outermost green grains, which support the full
weight. In contrast, for an irregular packing the force balance can only be fulfilled by allowing for smaller forces towards the
interior of the tree. For instance, in the situation shown in (b) the force f up eup will be split into a component acting towards
the large disk to the far left and a smaller one towards the one in the centre of the tree.

where α labels the components of the vectors. For N grains
in d dimensions with an average of ν neighbours per grain,
we hence obtain d N equations to solve for νN/2 forces
fij (see footnote 2 ). This shows i) that there can be no
stable packings with ν < 2d contacts per grain on average,
ii) that there is a unique solution for the forces fij leading
to a stable packing when ν = 2d, and iii) that there is a
multitude of solutions for ν > 2d. The latter packings are
called hyperstatic, while case ii) is referred to as isostatic
packing.
Incompressible grains without friction form isostatic
packings [14,16]: in the bulk the forces in the stable steady
state are uniquely determined.
Influence of boundaries. – To explore the stability
of a wet granular packing in the simplest setting we focus
in the following on the conceptually simplest non-trivial
case of a two-dimensional packing where all grains in the
bulk have exactly ν = 2d = 4 neighbours. A system that is
bounded by the solid wall to the bottom and a free surface
at the top admits then an elementary representation of
the propagation of forces to the solid wall: every grain at
the surface is supported by d contacts from grains further
down in the pile. Each of these in turn has d contacts in
addition to those used to support grains further up in the
pile, and this carries on to the grains in the lower-most
row which are fixed to the substrate (fig. 1(b), (c)). For
conciseness the immobile lower-most row of grains will be
called wall in the following.
This representation of the force network provides a
number of remarkable insights:
determine the magnitude of the forces fij at the
contacts with grains closer to the wall.
– Following the contact network from grain i towards
the wall provides an elementary force tree with a
unique force distribution relaying the load exerted by
the external force Fi towards the wall (cf. fig. 1(b),
(c)).
– Since the set of eqs. (1) is linear, its solution can
be written as a superposition of contributions of
elementary force trees starting in each grain. The
weights are proportional to the respective external
forces.
Force propagation. – We now explore the conse-
quences of this general approach. All directions will be
specified by angles with respect to the normal direction
towards the wall. Gravity acts in a direction θ, and the
forces propagate from disk i towards the wall in the direc-
tions αi for the uphill direction and βi for the downhill
direction, respectively3 . The corresponding unit vectors
are
   
up
cos αi cos βi
ei = , edown
i = . (3)
sin αi sin βi
For conciseness we suppress the index i in the following.
Denoting the magnitude of the associated forces as f up

– The force balance for each grain gives rise to d 3 When the unit vector points in uphill direction the associated

equations which is exactly the number needed to angle α opens in clockwise direction such that it takes negative
values. Analogously β is positive since it opens in counterclockwise
2 The factor 1/2 accounts for the symmetry fij = fij of the forces. direction.

14002-p2
 A response function perspective on yielding of wet granular matter
and f down , the two components of eq. (1) become
f up cos α + f down cos β = F cos θ,
up down
f sin α + f sin β = F sin θ,
which has the solution
f up sin(α − β) = F sin(θ − β),
down
f sin(α − β) = F sin(α − θ).
The angle (α − β) between the two directions supporting
a disk will typically lie in the range of π/3 to 2π/3
such that the corresponding sine function is of order
unity. Depending on the tilt angle θ the factor cos(θ − β)
takes values between 0.5 and 1, while sin(θ − β) is a
decreasing function which approaches zero for θ = β. For
larger θ the force f up eventually becomes negative and the
stability of the packing is only provided by the attractive
capillary force between the grains. When the absolute
value |f up | of the tensile force exceeds the strength |fb |
of the capillary bridge the grains are separated. When the
distance between the disks exceeds ℓ the bridge ruptures.
Subsequently, there no longer is a restoring force, and the
pile yields.
Note that the attractive forces propagate in uphill dir-
ection along the elementary tree (fig. 1(c)). Equation (5)
also describes the propagation of these forces along the
elementary tree towards the wall. Beyond the top node of
the tree the force F represents the force propagated down
from the parents to a certain grain4 . Grains on the edges
of the tree have only one immediate ancestor such that the
direction θ of the force exerted by that grain will typically
be very similar to α along the uphill edge of the tree and
β on its downhill side, respectively. Consequently, by far
most of the force propagates straight on along the outer
edge of the tree until the wall is reached.
The distribution of forces on the lower-most row of the
force tree is not uniform. Rather one typically observes
only small forces in the centre and two peaks at the
respective sides. This is an immediate consequence of
eq. (5) applied along the nodes of the tree: in the top
node the external force is split into two components along
the directions towards its lower neighbours. These will
pass on most of the stress to the bond opposite to the
contact point and only a comparatively small part in the
other direction to account for the fact that the direction
of the former two forces are not exactly parallel (fig. 1(b)).
As long as (at least locally) there is a preference for
particular directions of the bonds, most of the force will be
conducted straight down in the initially chosen direction,
and only the “scatter” reaches the centre part of the
tree’s support. In particular, for regular two-dimensional
packings (fig. 1(c)) there are no forces in the interior of
the tree. The force exerted by gravity on the first ancestor
propagates straight along the edges to the wall.
4 To avoid confusion with the up and downhill directions we adopt
the common parent-children terminology for the tree, where top node
of each tree is the first ancestor. He has two children and each of these
in turn are ancestors of trees with the same structure.
Yielding. – Dry granular matter starts to move when
the tilt angle θ exceeds the angle describing the direction
(4a)
β of contact points in downhill direction. Wet grains can
(4b) in that case still be supported by capillary forces as long
as no forces larger than the capillary bridge force fb are
required.
(5a) All required traction forces are propagated to the
(5b) wall, and in a steady state the total forces are obtained
by superposition of the contributions of all elementary
force trees. Since the contact points close to the wall
are members of the largest number of trees, they are
subjected to a random superposition of the largest number
of tensile forces. Consequently, they experience the largest
net forces. As a consequence
– wet granular systems preferentially yield far away
from the free surface, while for dry granulates the
smaller number of constraints close to the surface is
another decisive effect.
Using a continuum approach to the mechanics of wet
granular matter Halsey and Levine [18] came to the same
conclusion, i.e., that yielding in a wet packing occurs at a
finite depth below the surface (cf. below for a quantitative
comparison).
Minimal model. – We illustrate the predictive power
of the formalism by applying it to molecular-dynamics
simulations of a packing where the disks undergo thermal
motion. For the sake of simplicity disorder is included
only in the masses of the disks, and not in their size.
We consider, a regular packing (fig. 1(a)) of monodisperse
disks with a broad distribution of masses.
The position ri of each disk i is followed as a function
of time t by using a 5th-order predictor-corrector Gear
method [19] to integrate Newton’s equations of motion,
d2 ri 
mi 2
= Fi + fij (rij )eji , (6)
dt j
where the sum over j is over grains that have capillary
bridges with disk i. The interaction force fij (rij ) comprises
a repulsive nonlinear spring force
r κ
fij (rij ) = (2R − rij )1/2 (7)
2
when grains are compressed (i.e., for rij < 2R), and a
constant attractive capillary force when the grains are
separated, i.e., for 2R + ℓ > rij > 2R where ℓ is the rupture
length of the capillary bridge. In the sequel we will make
use of dimensionless rescaled quantities where we set the
diameter of the disks, the magnitude of the capillary force,
and the mass area density of the disks to unity.
The strength of the repulsion is gauged by the pre-
factor κ in eq. (7), which has been chosen to be κ = 104
for all displayed simulations. All disks have the same
radius R = 0.5, but their masses mi are Poisson distributed
14002-p3
S. H. Ebrahimnazhad Rahbari et al.

(a)

(b)

Fig. 2: (Colour on-line) The evolution of the centre of mass of two wet granular packings where different symbols refer to the
evolution at different angles θ, as specified in the respective legends: (a) a packing with an irregular height profile as shown
in fig. 1(a) (the system is actually wider, and fig. 1(a) shows that part where the system yields); (b) a system comprising
8 complete layers of grains. The left panels show bounded motion when θ < θc , and the right ones show the runaway when
the system yields. In the latter case y is not confined to the periodic cell but measured along the real line, and —in order
to emphasise the early stages of the yielding— a log-log representation is chosen. The dashed lines show a prediction of the
preferred direction of displacement of the centre of mass (cf. main text for more explanation). Length scales are measured in
units of the particle diameter. In order to give a clear impression about the spread of the data for different angles of inclination θ
the insets show the data in a 3D representation, where the distance to the respective critical angles θc ≃ 54.75 and θc ≃ 41.25 is
chosen as a third axis.

multiples of a mass unit μ = π/4, i.e., a disk has mass m
with probability
e−λ λn
 
m
P n= = with λ = 15. (8)
μ n!
The systems are subjected to periodic boundary
conditions in a square box of dimension L = 18 and
having 16 grains fixed at equidistant positions along
the wall. Gaps between these grains are 0.125 disk
diameters.
Figure 2 shows the results of the molecular-dynamics
simulations of two stacks with different mass and height
distribution. For very small tilt angles θ the centre of mass
shows only small fluctuations around a position (x0 ; y0 )
very close to the centre of mass of the regular static
packing. To provide room for the motion of the grains
the density becomes slightly smaller, thus leading to a
displacement of the centre of mass away from the wall
towards small negative x − x0 . Due to gravity and the
inclination of the plane it also slightly moves downhill such
that y − y0 takes small positive values.
When θ approaches θc it takes values close to β. In
that case the packing tends to tilt more and more in
downhill direction. Since both the acceleration g cos(θ − β)
due to gravity and the repulsive forces are very strong, this
tilt essentially consists in an almost horizontal motion of
the grains against the remaining (very small) component
g sin(θ − β) of gravity and a stretching of water bridges
(fig. 1(c)). When the amplitude of the fluctuations is small
as compared to the grain diameter the centre of mass of

14002-p4
 A response function perspective on yielding of wet granular matter

(a) (b)

Fig. 3: (Colour on-line) The parameter dependence of the yield angle θc for different height profiles of the packings, as specified
to the right of panel (b): “1 + 1” denotes one layer plus an additional grain in the 2nd layer, and “profile” denotes the height
profile also considered in fig. 2(a). For smaller θ the grains stick together and their centre of mass is confined in a small region
(left panels of fig. 2). For larger θ the systems approach a state where the grains slide downwards (right panels of fig. 2). (a)
Dependence of the yield angles θc on the distance x0 − xw of the x-coordinate of the centre of mass x0 from the location xw of
the wall supporting the pile. The solid line indicates the yield angle for a dry packing. (b) The data shown in (a) all lie on the
master curve eq. (12) (solid red line).

each grain is displaced along a line
x0 − x = (y − y0 ) tan β (9)
with respect to its position (x0 ; y0 ) in the regular packing.
Consequently, one expects that also the centre-of-mass
fluctuations will dominantly proceed in this direction. The
uplifting of the centre of mass described by this equation
amounts to the well-known Reynolds’ dilatancy [20,21].
The left panels of fig. 2 show the fluctuations of two
systems for a range of tilt angels below θc . The easy
direction for fluctuations eq. (9) is indicated by dashed
lines. It provides a remarkably good description of the
preferred direction of fluctuations. When approaching the
critical angle θc from below the fluctuations become very
large, but the system keeps fluctuating around its ordered
position.
The right panels of fig. 2 show the early stages of
the yielding on double logarithmic scales. Initially the
centre of mass follows the direction given by eq. (9).
However, when the displacement approaches the order of a
grain diameter (i.e., order one), the approximations taken
to derive eq. (9) break down. Indeed at that point the
grains approach the next valley where they are accelerated
and scattered. The resulting collisions and subsequent
ruptures of capillary bridges eventually lead to fluidisation
of the system. The centre of mass has then be lifted, and
subsequently, it moves downhill with a constant speed.
The considerable lift of the centre of mass indicates
that the system becomes dilute in the fluidized state. It
typically moves quite far into the gassy regime, because
for wet grains the only source of dissipation is rupture of
capillary bridges —a mechanism which is considerably less
efficient than friction or a finite restitution of grains.
The critical angle θc can be found by bisecting the
respective angles where one finds bounded motion and
downhill flow in successively longer simulations. For a
variety of different height profiles and various realizations
of mass disorder for each system we verified that the
systems always yield in the bottom layer. As expected
from our earlier discussion we also observe that upon
increasing the number of layers of grains the piles tend
to yield at smaller θc . Figure 3(a) shows the dependence
of θc on the x-coordinate of the centre of mass, which is
taken here as a means to characterise the load. Due to the
very broad mass distribution there is a lot of scatter, but
the expected trend is nicely followed.
Response function treatment. – The expectation
that the pile yields at the bottom can further be substan-
tiated. Since we are dealing with a regular packing α =
−β = const throughout, the external forces are propagated
to the wall according to
up
fij sin(2β) = mi g sin(β − θ), (10a)
down
fij sin(2β) = mi g sin(β + θ). (10b)
Subsequently the force propagates straight on along the
respective lattice directions to the wall. In total the largest
tensile forces appear in the contact points at the wall. At
the n-th position we find
sin(β − θ)
fnwall = Mn g , (11)
sin(2β)
where Mn denotes the total mass of all disks in a column to
the upper downhill direction away from the wall, which is
based at site n —in other words the disks along the uphill
side of a force tree starting at the free surface of the
pile and ending at position n on the wall. Denoting the
maximum of these mass loads as M and observing that
the pile yields when the tensile force in the lower-most
contact of the associated column exceeds the bridge force

14002-p5
S. H. Ebrahimnazhad Rahbari et al.
fb , we find an explicit prediction for the stability border
of the pile
fb
sin(β − θ) = sin(2β). (12)
Mg L. Katthän, A. Milchev, K. Röller, M. Scheel,
As shown in fig. 3(b) all numerical data fall on the and M. Schröter.
parameter-free prediction eq. (12). This confirms not only
our assertion that wet granular packings yield at the
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To explore the relation of our yield criterion (12) to the [3] Hornbaker D. J., Albert R., Albert I., Barabási
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assembly.
14002-p6
∗∗∗
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