Dresden 2026 – wissenschaftliches Programm
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DY: Fachverband Dynamik und Statistische Physik
DY 41: Poster: Nonlinear Dynamics, Granular Matter, and Machine Learning
DY 41.1: Poster
Mittwoch, 11. März 2026, 15:00–18:00, P5
Dynamics of Root Growth in Granular Media — Tianhui Liao1,3, Jiayun Huang1, Shihe Pan1, Matthias Schroeter1,4, and •Kai Huang1,2 — 1Collective Dynamics Lab, Division of Natural and Applied Sciences, Duke Kunshan University, 215306 Kunshan, Jiangsu, China — 2Experimentalphysik V, Universität Bayreuth, 95440 Bayreuth, Germany — 3Department of Physics, School of Science, Westlake University, Hangzhou, China — 4Max-Planck-Institut für Dynamik und Selbstorganisation, Am Faßberg 17, 37077 Göttingen, Germany
Since the pioneering work of C. Darwin, the dynamics of growing plants and its interactions with the surrounding environment have been a topic of interest over centuries. As more frequent flooding and drought arise along with global climate change, it is essential to develop ecological models based on first principle understanding of the 'microscopic' interactions between plant roots and surrounding environment. Given the complex rheological behavior of granular media, it is intuitive to understand how plant roots navigate through granular media with heterogeneous stress distributions. By means of X-ray computer tomography, we measure the local packing density of individual `soil' particles using (Set-)Voronoi tessellation, along with the morphological changes of plant roots. Our goal is to map temporal changes in packing fraction, displacement fields, and strain fields to reveal how roots actively adapt to the surrounding environment.
Keywords: rheology; granular media; jamming; ecology