Eur. Phys. J. B 48, 509-517 (2005)
https://doi.org/10.1140/epjb/e2006-00004-6

Thermal conductivity associated with a bead-bead contact decorated by a liquid bridge

An experimental study based on the response of a chain subjected to thermal cycles

Laboratoire de Physique de l'ENS de Lyon, 46 Allée d'Italie, 69364 Lyon Cedex 07, France

Corresponding author: ^a jean-christophe.geminard@ens-lyon.fr

Received: 24 March 2005
Revised: 2 June 2005
Published online: 19 January 2006

Abstract

We report an experimental study of the heat transport along a chain of macroscopic beads: at one end, one bead is periodically heated and we record the resulting temperature variations of another bead as a function of position and time. The experimental results show that the chain behaves like a high-order low-pass filter. The measurement of the associated cut-off frequency makes it possible to determine accurately the resistance of the bead-bead contact: we make use of the experimental setup for studying the effects of liquid bridges decorating the bead-bead contacts, which provides important clues for understanding the thermal properties of partially wet granular matter.