Granular media, whose features range from the particle scale to the force-chain scale and the bulk scale, are usually modeled as either particulate or continuum materials. In contrast with each of these approaches, network representations are natural for the simultaneous examination of microscopic, mesoscopic, and macroscopic features. In this paper, we treat granular materials as spatially emb...

This paper presents a micro-mechanical study on the characteristics of shear-induced anisotropy in granular media. Based on three-dimensional Discrete Element Method (DEM) simulations, the distinct features associated with the evolution of internal granular structure and different anisotropy sources during drained/undrained shearing of granular samples are carefully examined. The study finds th...

Granular computing is an emerging field of research that attempts to formalize and explore methods and heuristics for human problem solving with multiple levels of granularity and abstraction. A fundamental issue of granular computing is the construction, representation and utilization of granules and granular structures. Basic granules represent the basic pieces of knowledge. A granular struct...

This paper focuses on generalization of rough set model and rule induction. First a extension of rough set approximations is established on general granular structure, so that the rough set models on some special granular structures are meaningful. The new rough approximation operators are interpreted by topological terminology well. Conversely, by means of the new rough approximation operators...

Granular computing is an emerging field of study focusing on structured thinking, structured problem solving and structured information processing with multiple levels of granularity [1, 2, 7, 8, 13, 17, 19, 20, 21, 22, 24, 25, 29]. Many theories may be interpreted in terms of granular computing. The main objective of this chapter is to examine the granular structures and approximations used in...

To characterize the effects of pentachlorophenol (PCP) on the performance and microbial community of aerobic granular sludge in sequencing batch reactor (SBR), the web-based terminal restriction fragment length polymorphism (T-RFLP) and real-time PCR (RT-PCR) techniques were used to explore the bacterial community structure. When PCP increased from 0 to 50 mg/L, the COD removal rate changed lit...

CrSiN films with various Si contents were deposited by reactive magnetron sputtering using the codeposition of Cr and Si targets in the presence of the reactive gas mixture. Comparative studies on microstructure and mechanical properties between CrN and CrSiN films with various Si contents were carried out. The structure of the CrSiN filmswas found to change from crystalline to amorphous struct...

Animal studies have shown that prenatal stress is able to induce long-lasting neurobiological and behavioral alterations in adult offspring. In spite of the facts that hippocampus is sensitive to early developmental influences and its known functional importance in learning and memory, few data are available on the effect of prenatal stress on the structure of hippocampus. Therefore, this study...

Nuclear magnetic resonance measurements of scale dependent dynamics in a random solid open-cell foam reveal a characteristic length scale for transport processes in this novel type of porous medium. These measurements and lattice Boltzmann simulations for a model foam structure indicate dynamical behavior analogous to lower porosity consolidated granular porous media, despite extremely high por...