Impact of a projectile on a granular medium described by a collision model

Phys Rev Lett. 2007 Dec 14;99(24):248001. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevLett.99.248001. Epub 2007 Dec 14.

Abstract

We propose a model for the propagation of energy due to the impact of a granular projectile on a dense granular medium. Energy is transferred from grain to grain during binary collision events. The transport of energy may then be viewed as a random walk with a split of energy during successive collisions. There is a qualitative and quantitative agreement between this simple description and experimental results.