Effect of Friction on Shear Jamming

Shear jamming of granular materials was first found for systems of frictional disks, with a static friction coefficient μ ≈ 0.6 (Bi et al. Nature (2011)). Jamming by shear is obtained by starting from a zero-stress state with a packing fraction Φ between Φ_J (isotropic jamming) and a lowest Φ_S for shear jamming. This phenomenon is associated with strong anisotropy in stress and the contact network in the form of force chains, which are stabilized and/or enhanced by the presence of friction. Whether shear jamming occurs for frictionless particles is under debate. The issue we address experimentally is how changing friction affects shear jamming. By applying a homogeneous simple shear, we study the effect of friction by using photoelastic disks either wrapped with Teflon to reduce friction or with fine teeth on the edge to increase friction. Shear jamming is still observed; however, the difference Φ_J - Φ_S is smaller with lower friction. In addition, we add a shaking procedure after each quasi-static shear step to remove relatively weak frictional contacts, resulting in dramatically postponing the onset for shear jamming to appear.