erc-cohpa
Étienne Minnaert started his PhD with Olivier Pouliquen and Pierre-Yves Lagrée (Institut Jean le Rond d’Alembert) on the 1st of November, 2025. After graduating from the Université Paris Cité with a Master’s Degree in Physics of Complex Systems, he joins the team to work on the numerical and theoretical study of drag and lift forces on an object in motion within a granular medium.
We wish him a warm welcome and an enjoyable work among our team!
Published in Physical Review Fluids with Denis Dumont as first author, the article entitled « Discontinuous shear thickening in dry granular materials induced by non-Coulombian friction » is available here.
Discontinuous shear thickening (DST), extensively studied in dense suspensions, can also occur in dry granular materials when interparticle friction depends on contact force. Using discrete-element simulations, this study shows that introducing a non-Coulombian friction law, mimicking the effect of coatings or lubricants on grain interactions, leads to DST even in the absence of a suspending fluid. A mean-field model is developed that links the microscopic friction law to the bulk rheology, capturing the transition from continuous to discontinuous thickening and offering insights for tuning flow properties in dry industrial powders.
Maxime Lajeunesse started his PhD with Olivier Pouliquen and Francisco M. Rocha on the 1st of October, 2024. After graduating from the École Nationale Supérieurs des Mines de Nancy with a path in civil engineering, he joins the IUSTI laboratory and team to work on developing experiments to understand the effect of cohesion inside granular media.
We wish him a warm welcome and an enjoyable work among our team!
Created by the European Society of Rheology in 1997 to commemorate the scientific achievements of Karl Weissenberg, who worked in several European countries, the Weissenberg Award acknowledges “outstanding, long-term achievements in the field of rheology”, as explained on the ESR website.
Denis Dumont was already working with Olivier Pouliquen and Maxime Nicolas during his previous contract with Aix-Marseille University, he changed his status to become a CNRS agent. Vincent Bertin was previously working at the University of Twente in the Netherlands before making his first step at IUSTI. Anjishnu Choudhury is working jointly at IUSTI and the Laboratory D’Alembert, organizing his time between Marseille and Paris but always on the same project.
We wish them a warm welcome to the team!
erc-cohpa