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Close-packed granular clusters: hydrostatics and persistent Gaussian fluctuations

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Abstract

Dense granular clusters often behave like macro-particles. We address this interesting phenomenon in a model system of inelastically colliding hard disks inside a circular box, driven by a thermal wall at zero gravity. Molecular dynamics simulations show a close-packed cluster of almost circular shape, weakly fluctuating in space and isolated from the driving wall by a low-density gas. The density profile of the system agrees very well with the azimuthally symmetric solution of granular hydrostatic equations employing constitutive relations by Grossman et al., whereas the widely used Enskog-type constitutive relations show poor accuracy. We find that fluctuations of the center of mass of the system are Gaussian. This suggests an effective Langevin description in terms of a macro-particle, confined by a harmonic potential and driven by delta-correlated noise. Surprisingly, the fluctuations persist when increasing the number of particles in the system.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Racah Institute of Physics, Hebrew University of Jerusalem, Jerusalem, 91904, Israel

    Baruch Meerson

  2. Institute “Carlos I” for Theoretical and Computational Physics, University of Granada, Granada, Spain

    Manuel Díez-Minguito

  3. Charité, Augustenburger Platz 1, 13353, Berlin, Germany

    Thomas Schwager & Thorsten Pöschel

Authors
  1. Baruch Meerson
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  2. Manuel Díez-Minguito
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  3. Thomas Schwager
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  4. Thorsten Pöschel
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Correspondence to Thorsten Pöschel.

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Meerson, B., Díez-Minguito, M., Schwager, T. et al. Close-packed granular clusters: hydrostatics and persistent Gaussian fluctuations. Granular Matter 10, 21–27 (2007). https://doi.org/10.1007/s10035-007-0055-1

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  • DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s10035-007-0055-1

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