Shear jamming in granular experiments without basal friction

Jammed states of frictional granular systems can be induced by shear strain at densities below the isostatic jamming density (phi(c)). It remains unclear, however, how much friction affects this so-called shear jamming. Friction appears in two ways in this type of experiment: friction between particles, and friction between particles and the base on which they rest. Here, we study how particle-bottom friction, or basal friction, affects shear jamming in quasi-two-dimensional experiments. In order to study this issue experimentally, we apply simple shear to a disordered packing of photoelastic disks. We can tune the basal friction of the particles by immersing the particles in a density matched liquid, thus removing the normal force, hence the friction, between the particles and base. We record the overall shear stress, and particle motion, and the photoelastic response of the particles. We compare the shear response of dry and immersed samples, which enables us to determine how basal friction affects shear jamming. Our findings indicate that changing the basal friction shifts the point of shear jamming, but it does not change the basic phenomenon of shear jamming. Copyright (C) EPLA, 2014