What is it about?
Several animal locomotion strategies are based on the anisotropic nature of the forces experienced by the moving body with its environment. We present an experimental study on the anisotropy of the frictional force experienced by a cylinder moving in a granular medium as a function of the orientation α between the cylinder and its velocity.
Featured Image
Photo by Nick Abrams on Unsplash
Why is it important?
Anisotropic friction is of great importance, since it is the origin of propulsion in granular media such as sand, where various animal species adapt their bodies to swim in sand. It is well known that the description of granular flows around objects is of great complexity due to the absence of constitutive relations that allow closing the equations of force balance and mass conservation, as in the case of fluids.
Perspectives
The complex behavior of a granular medium is currently a challenge due to the lack of universal constitutive laws as well as the additional complexity provided by the shape of the intruder in the media.
René Zuñiga
Universidad de Santiago de Chile
Read the Original
This page is a summary of: Anisotropic frictional model for an object sliding in a granular media, Physics of Fluids, January 2024, American Institute of Physics,
DOI: 10.1063/5.0188244.
You can read the full text:
Contributors
The following have contributed to this page
