Circular sector | EPFL Graph Search

A circular sector, also known as circle sector or disk sector (symbol: ⌔), is the portion of a disk (a closed region bounded by a circle) enclosed by two radii and an arc, where the smaller area is known as the minor sector and the larger being the major sector. In the diagram, θ is the central angle, the radius of the circle, and is the arc length of the minor sector. The angle formed by connecting the endpoints of the arc to any point on the circumference that is not in the sector is equal to half the central angle. A sector with the central angle of 180° is called a half-disk and is bounded by a diameter and a semicircle. Sectors with other central angles are sometimes given special names, such as quadrants (90°), sextants (60°), and octants (45°), which come from the sector being one 4th, 6th or 8th part of a full circle, respectively. Confusingly, the arc of a quadrant (a circular arc) can also be termed a quadrant. Traditionally wind directions on the compass rose are given as one of the 8 octants (N, NE, E, SE, S, SW, W, NW) because that is more precise than merely giving one of the 4 quadrants, and the wind vane typically does not have enough accuracy to allow more precise indication. The name of the instrument "octant" comes from the fact that it is based on 1/8th of the circle. Most commonly, octants are seen on the compass rose. Circular arc#Sector area The total area of a circle is πr^2. The area of the sector can be obtained by multiplying the circle's area by the ratio of the angle θ (expressed in radians) and 2π (because the area of the sector is directly proportional to its angle, and 2π is the angle for the whole circle, in radians): The area of a sector in terms of L can be obtained by multiplying the total area pir^2 by the ratio of L to the total perimeter 2pir. Another approach is to consider this area as the result of the following integral: Converting the central angle into degrees gives The length of the perimeter of a sector is the sum of the arc length and the two radii: where θ is in radians.

Jamming in granular media

Michel Tsukahara

This thesis studies the phenomenon of jamming in granular media, such as when a salt shaker gets clogged. We use modern instrumentation, like X-ray synchrotron tomography, to look inside real jamming experiments. High performance computers allow simulating mathematical models of jamming, but we are also able to treat some of them just using paper and pencil. One main part of this thesis consists of an experimental validation of the distinct-element-method (DEM). In this model, grains are modeled separately, their trajectories obey Newton's laws of motion and a model of the contacts between grains is given. Real experiments of jamming of glass beads flowing out of a container were carried out. 3D snapshots of the interior of the media were taken using X-ray synchrotron tomography. These snapshots were computer processed using state of the art image analysis. It was found that 3D DEM is capable of predicting quite well the final positions of the grains of the real experiments. Indeed, in cases of instant jamming (jamming without a substantial previous flow of beads) the simulations agree well with the real experiments. However, in cases of non instant jamming, because of chaotic behavior of the model and the system, the results do not agree. Furthermore, a sensitivity analysis to grain location and size perturbations was carried out. In a second part, we describe results on 2D DEM simulations of jamming in a hopper. We focus on the jamming probability J, the average time T before jamming and the average number ψ of beads falling through the hole when jamming occurs. These quantities were related to global parameters such as the number of grains, the hole size, the friction coefficient, grain length or the angle of the hopper (in opposition to fine-scale parameters that are the positions and radii of the grains). In agreement with intuition, a monotonic behavior of J and ψ as a function of the number of grains, the hole size, the friction coefficient was found. However, surprising results were also found such as the non-monotonicity of the average number of beads falling through the hole when jamming occurs as a function of the grain length and the hopper angle. In the third part, we study simple probabilistic 2D models called SPM, in which non-interacting particles move with constant speed towards the center of a circular sector. Formulas giving the jamming probability or the average time before jamming when jamming occurs as a function of global parameters were found. SPM and 2D DEM were compared and a locally good correspondence between the global parameters of the two was established. SPM led us to study some combinatorial problems, in particular two bi-indexed recurrence sequences. One gives the number of ways of placing identical balls in fixed-size numbered urns and the other the number of subsets of a given ordered set without a certain number of consecutive elements. Several different ways of computing the sequences, each advantageous in certain cases, were found.

EPFL2009

Jamming in granular media

Michel Tsukahara

EPFL2009