Micromechanical Origin of Plasticity and Hysteresis in Nestlike Packings

Mechanical compression of a random packing of sticks bounded in a cylinder. The left-most photograph shows the experimental setup and the middle panel zooms in on the critical parts. The computational counterparts of the setup appear in the right-most panel, the relaxed state at the top and the compressed state at the bottom. Selected for a Focus in Physics and an Editors’ Suggestion.