Synchronized oscillations and acoustic fluidization in confined granular materials

Granular Flows and Gas-fluidization

This paper examines the roles that granular flow theory might play in the modeling the solid-phase stresses in fluidized beds. It begins with a discussion of the historical limiting cases of the quasistatic and rapid-flow regimes. It then reviews the elastic granular theories that unify those two regimes. Finally it shows that measurements of solid-phase pressures cannot be explained by commonl...

Acoustic fluidization for earthquakes?

Melosh [1996] has suggested that acoustic fluidization could provide an alternative to theories that are invoked as explanations for why some faults appear to be weak. We show that there is a subtle but profound inconsistency in the theory that unfortunately invalidates the results. We propose possible remedies but must acknowledge that the relevance of acoustic fluidization remains an open que...

Convection and fluidization in oscillatory granular flows: The role of acoustic streaming.

Convection and fluidization phenomena in vibrated granular beds have attracted a strong interest from the physics community since the last decade of the past century. As early reported by Faraday, the convective flow of large inertia particles in vibrated beds exhibits enigmatic features such as frictional weakening and the unexpected influence of the interstitial gas. At sufficiently intense v...

in synchronized neuronal oscillations

Sparsely synchronized neuronal oscillations.

We discuss here the properties of fast global oscillations that emerge in networks of neurons firing irregularly at a low rate. We first provide a simple introduction to these sparsely synchronized oscillations, then show how they can be studied analytically in the simple setting of rate models and leaky integrate-and-fire neurons, and finally describe how various neurophysiological features ca...