Experimental validation of a micromechanically based compaction law for mixtures of soft and hard grains

International audienceIn this Letter, we report on an experimental study which analyzes the compressive behavior of two-dimensional bidisperse granular assemblies made of soft (hyperelastic) and hard grains in varying proportions(κ is the portion of soft grains). By means of a recently developed uniaxial compression setup [Vu and Barés,Phys. Rev. E 100, 042907 (2019)] and using an advanced digital image correlation method, we follow, beyondthe jamming point, the evolution of the main mechanical observables, from the global scale down to the strain field inside each deformable grain. First, we validate experimentally and extend to the uniaxial case a recently proposed micromechanical compaction model linking the evolution of the applied pressure P to the packing fraction φ [Cantor et al., Phys. Rev. Lett. 124, 208003 (2020)]. Second, we reveal two different linear regimesdepending on whether the system is above or below a crossover strain unraveling a transition from a discrete to a continuous-like system. Third, the evolution of these linear laws is found to vary linearly with κ. These results provide a comprehensive experimental and theoretical framework that can now be extended to a more general class of polydisperse soft granular systems