Experimental study of solid-liquid-type transitions in vibrated granular layers and the relation with surface waves

Capillarylike fluctuations of a solid-liquid interface in a noncohesive granular system

One of the most noticeable collective motion of noncohesive granular matter is clustering under certain conditions. In particular, when a quasi-two-dimensional monolayer of monodispersed noncohesive particles is vertically vibrated, a solid-liquid-like transition occurs when the driving amplitude exceeds a critical value. Here the physical mechanism underlying particle clustering relies on the strong interactions mediated by grain collisions, rather than on grain-grain cohesive forces. In average, the solid cluster resembles a drop, with a striking circular shape. We experimentally investigate the coarse-grained solid-liquid interface fluctuations, which are characterized through the static and dynamic correlation functions in the Fourier space. These fluctuations turn out to be well described by the capillary wave theory, which allows us to measure the solid-liquid interface surface tension and mobility once the granular "thermal" kinetic energy is determined. Despite that the system is strongly out of equilibrium and that the granular temperature is not uniform, there is energy equipartition at the solid-liquid interface, for a relatively large range of angular wave numbers. Furthermore, both surface tension and mobility are consistent with a simple order of magnitude estimation considering the characteristic energy, length, and time scales, which is very similar to what can be done for atomic systems.

Fluidization of a vertically vibrated two-dimensional hard sphere packing: a granular meltdown

We report measurements of the fluidization process in vertically vibrated two-dimensional granular packings. An initially close packed granular bed is exposed to sinusoidal container oscillations with gradually increasing amplitude. At first the particles close to the free surface become mobile. When a critical value of the forcing strength is reached the remaining crystal suddenly breaks up and the bed fluidizes completely. This transition leads to discontinuous changes in the density distribution and in the root mean square displacement of the individual particles. Likewise the vertical center of mass coordinate increases by leaps and bounds at the transition. It turns out that the maximum container velocity v0 is the crucial driving parameter determining the state of a fully fluidized system. For particles of various sizes the transition to full fluidization occurs at the same value of v 2 0/gd, where d is the particle diameter and g is the gravitational acceleration. A discontinuous fluidization transition is only observed when the particles are highly elastic.