Local and global avalanches in a 2D sheared granular medium

Abstract: We present the experimental and numerical studies of a 2D sheared amorphous material constituted of bidisperse photo-elastic disks. We analyze the statistics of avalanches during shear including the local and global fluctuations in energy and changes in particle positions and orientations. We find scale free distributions for these global and local avalanches denoted by power-laws whose cut-offs vary with inter-particle friction and packing fraction. Different exponents are found for these power-laws depending on the quantity from which variations are extracted. An asymmetry in time of the avalanche shapes is evidenced along with the fact that avalanches are mainly triggered from the shear bands. A simple relation independent from the intensity, is found between the number of local avalanches and the global avalanches they form. We also compare these experimental and numerical results for both local and global fluctuations to predictions from meanfield and depinning theories.