The effect of friction on wide shear bands

Frictional and frictionless granular materials in a split-bottom ring shear cell geometry show wide shear bands under slow, quasi-static deformation. Here, the differences between frictional and frictionless materials are elaborated using discrete element simulations (DEM). Several continuum fields like the density, the velocity field, the deformation gradient, and the stress are used here for comparison. Interestingly, the shear stress intensity, i.e., the shear stress divided by the pressure, is approximately constant throughout the wide shear band, as long as the strain rate is large enough—indicating a Mohr-Coulomb type yield stress fluid. The “viscosity,” i.e., the shear stress divided by the strain rate, is proportional to the pressure, which is increasing with the contact number density. Furthermore, the viscosity is inversely proportional to the nondimensional strain rate, indicating shear softening behavior inside the wide shear bands.