Considerable progress has been made over the last two decades in modeling granular materials. Efforts to characterize disordered granular texture, force chains, and grain velocities have led to a better understanding of the complex rheology of granular media, and of granular behaviors under different driving and geometric inputs.  Another path of progress, motivated by problems in natural and industrial settings, has focused on the interaction of granular media with an ambient fluid or solid phase, realizing the impact of grain properties like stiffness, shape, size distribution, and contact behavior on the macroscopic observables of the system.  Developments in these areas have emerged jointly from the physics and engineering communities, based on studies of a range of materials, from model granular media to soils and powders.

This conference, organized by MIT (Cambridge, USA) and the MiDi Network (Montpellier, France), is intended to bring those communities together to focus on the modeling of granular materials over various scales. All theoretical, numerical, and experimental approaches are welcome, including upscaling and coarse-graining procedures in model granular materials, statistical physical models, homogenization methods, analysis of specific behaviors of natural granular media and its microstructure, cemented granular materials, and inertial flows. The 3-day conference program in Montpellier will be composed of invited talks and shorter contributed talks by the participants.

The deadline for abstract submission
has been extended to May 19, 2014