We describe an international collaboration between Dr. Martin Van Hecke's group at the University of Leiden in the Netherlands and Dr. Wolfgang Losert's group at the University of Maryland: College Park in the United States. Specifically, we combine our effort in order to carry out three dimensional imaging of the positions and rearrangements of all particles during a slow shear flow of granular matter in a split-bottom shear cell geometry. The aim is to better understand dense granular flows at the level of individual particle displacements. We find that for low shear rates the flow structure of this fluid immersed granular material are similar to the flow structure of dry granular materials; the radial velocity profiles can be fit with an error function. In the shear zone, the local displacements are characterized by a tendency of granules to roll past their neighbors. Reversing the shear direction leads to a flow profile that does not exactly mirror the flow profile before reversal, indicating irreversible deformations in the shear zone. Following the motion of individual particles through at least ten oscillations shows that particles in the shear band rearrange.

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Wolfgang Losert received a Diplom in Technical Physics from the Technical University Munich in 1995, and a Ph.D. in Physics from the City University of New York in 1998. He has held a postdoctoral appointment with Prof Jerry Gollub at at the Haverford College and is now Associate Professor at the University of Maryland College Park, Associated with Physics, IPST, IREAP, and the Biophysics and Bioengineering Program.

Researchers should cite this work as follows:

• (2009), "Collaborative Research: Visualizing the aging process in granular matter using experiment and simulation ," http://globalhub.org/resources/1916.

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