The effective phase change from fluid behaviour to solid behaviour, that too often occurs in granular flow and brings with it such unwelcome events as funnel flows in hoppers and clogging of other material handling devices, is studied using a discrete particle computer simulation of a Couette flow with gravity. This simulation exhibits the full range of granular flow behaviour, from a stagnant ...

Displacement finite element analysis is performed for a cone-penetration test in cohesionless soils. By modelling finite strain in the soil and large scale sliding at the penetrometer–soil interface, a more realistic penetration process is simulated in which the penetrometer is assumed to be rigid and the soil is assumed to be an elastic-perfect-plastic continuum obeying the Mohr–Coulomb criter...

Among measures that are used to prevent the triggering of shallow landslides and for erosion control, root reinforcement has spread out widely as its contribution environmental sustainability is high. Although in recent years reliability-based design (RBD) been applied increasingly assessment slope stability address shortcomings deterministic approach (which does not consider geotechnical uncer...

The myxozoan Henneguya friderici is a parasite of the gills, intestine, kidney and liver of Leporinus friderici, a characiform fish belonging to the family Anostomidae. Forty-two specimens of L. friderici that had been caught in the Mogi Guaçú River, state of São Paulo, were studied. Elongated white plasmodia were found in the gill filaments of 10 host specimens (24%). The mature spores had an ...

How small can superconductors be? For isolated nanoparticles subject to quantum size effects, P.W. Anderson in 1959 conjectured that superconductivity could only exist when the electronic level spacing δ is smaller than the superconducting gap energy Δ. Here we report a scanning tunnelling spectroscopy study of superconducting lead (Pb) nanocrystals grown on the (110) surface of InAs. We find t...

A new formulation as well as a new solution technique is proposed for an equilibrium path-following method in two-dimensional quasistatic frictional contact problems. We consider the Coulomb friction law as well as geometrical nonlinearity explicitly. Based on a criterion of maximum dissipation of energy, we propose a formulation as a mathematical program with complementarity constraints (MPEC)...

We present an implementation of realistic static friction in molecular dynamics (MD) simulations of granular particles. In our model, to break contacts between two particles, one has to apply a finite amount of force, determined by the Coulomb criterion. Using a two dimensional model, we show that piles generated by avalanches have a finite angle of repose θR (finite slopes). Furthermore, these...