Elastic Energy, Fluctuations and Temperature for Granular Materials

We probe, using a model system, elastic and kinetic energies for sheared granular materials. For large enough $P\mathrm{/}{E}_y$ (pressure/Young’s modulus) and $P\mathrm{/}\rho v^2$ ($P\mathrm{/}$kinetic energy density) elastic dominates kinetic energy, and energy fluctuations become primarily elastic in nature. This regime has likely been reached in recent experiments. We consider a generalization of the granular temperature, $T_g$, with both kinetic and elastic terms and that changes smoothly from one regime to the other. This $T_g$ is roughly consistent with a temperature adapted from equilibrium statistical mechanics.