Clustering and phases of compartmentalized granular gases

Phys Rev E Stat Nonlin Soft Matter Phys. 2009 Feb;79(2 Pt 1):021307. doi: 10.1103/PhysRevE.79.021307. Epub 2009 Feb 27.

Abstract

This paper experimentally investigates the clustering conditions for compartmentalized monodisperse granular gases, determining the critical particle number and condensation granular temperature at the gas-clustering transition. When one heavier intruding particle is added to a monodisperse gas, it is found that the condensation temperature decreases with the ratio of the mass of the intruding particle to that of the background particle. This phenomenon can be mathematically characterized by a proposed linear relation, which is reminiscent of a relation between the freezing point depression for a solvent and the concentration of an added solute. Finally we perform various tests by changing the numbers of two types of particles in bidisperse granular mixtures to construct the phase diagrams, which present the range of the five different states, namely, homogeneous gas, unstable-gas, one-clustering, two-clustering, and granular oscillation states.

Publication types

  • Research Support, Non-U.S. Gov't