Static friction phenomena in granular materials: Coulomb law versus particle geometry.

The static as well as the dynamic behavior of granular material are determined by dynamic and static friction. There are well known methods to inlcude static friction in molecular dynamics simulations using scarcely understood forces. We propose an ansatz based on the geometrical shape of nonspherical particles which does not involve an explicit expression for static friction. It is shown that the simulations based on this model are close to experimental results.